IPCC Report

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jacob
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by jacob »


cmonkey
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by cmonkey »

Maine looks pretty good! Too bad it'll be under water.

It takes a great leap in how one thinks to overcome the perception that this is not going to affect one as an individual. We aren't trained to think this way. Everything always happens to someone else, it's all externalized. Thank the media for this.

This is ultimately the challenge we face - bringing the threat to the front door when it's not quite there yet.

chenda
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by chenda »

We are truly living in end times. It's all just so sad.

daylen
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by daylen »

At least we haven't blown ourselves up yet. We are probably lucky to have made it this far without starting a nuclear war (given all the close calls).

Hobbes
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by Hobbes »

Meanwhile, Alaska just gets bluer and bluer (ie, wetter) as time goes on! It's looking like a homestead in Alaska is the best way to go in terms of weathering out climate change.

theanimal
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by theanimal »

Hobbes wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 5:22 pm
Meanwhile, Alaska just gets bluer and bluer (ie, wetter) as time goes on!
Yes and no. Snowfall has been highly variable over the past few years. And the past month and a half has set records all across the state for lack of precipitation. Many areas in southeast Alaska had less than 1 inch of precipitation in the wettest time period of the year, when they usually have 20+.. Snowfall is arriving later or not at all across the state reach year. The secondary and tertiary effects of this are yet to be seen.

However, certain areas like the Interior do seem to have increased rainfall and snow. But even with warmer temperatures, I don't think most would enjoy living here.

BRUTE
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:54 am
if humans immediately cease all economic activity, there's a very good chance that the world just might avoid hitting it when nature cashes it in. This means eliminating things like power production (electricity, heating, water services, reading this post on a computer screen or on paper for that matter), transportation (driving, flying, the moving of goods), and eating (modern agricultural practices)... right now, immediately, definitely not 5 years from now. Yes, this was an actual suggestion!
so it's genocide either way. humans may as well party on.

slowtraveler
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by slowtraveler »

The threat of nuclear war last century was scarier imo.

Hobbes
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by Hobbes »

At least nuclear war gives you a reasonably good chance of being vaporized (ie, dying very quickly) as opposed to struggling with everyone else to get what food remains, until finally succumbing at the end anyways (ie: drawn out death)?
Or did I interpret Jacob's post overly negatively?
theanimal wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:22 pm
Yes and no. Snowfall has been highly variable over the past few years. And the past month and a half has set records all across the state for lack of precipitation. Many areas in southeast Alaska had less than 1 inch of precipitation in the wettest time period of the year, when they usually have 20+.. Snowfall is arriving later or not at all across the state reach year. The secondary and tertiary effects of this are yet to be seen.

However, certain areas like the Interior do seem to have increased rainfall and snow. But even with warmer temperatures, I don't think most would enjoy living here.
Well, that's unfortunate. I suppose it's off to the interior, then!

ThisDinosaur
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by ThisDinosaur »

theanimal wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:22 pm
But even with warmer temperatures, I don't think most would enjoy living here.
Why? Months long nights? Grizzly bears? No megastores?
jacob wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 4:48 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNgLxidcsWE
Continent wide droughts and heatwaves? In all seriousness, is there anywhere on earth that is likely to remain habitable +/- farmable for the next 60-100 years in the worst case? Did you buy property in the midwest because you think that's the sweet spot?

jacob
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by jacob »

@TD - Expect agricultural output to be down 20-30% 60 years from now. That's not a global disaster as much as it is a bunch of ongoing regional disasters. Humans could, for example, stop feeding their soybean production to pigs and cattle and eat the beans themselves to take the pressure off. Will they do that? Nah... not as long as some can still afford steak.

A 100 years from now ... it'll be somewhat worse.

The bigger issue is that these issues are connected. Unless you're theanimal or better when you move to Alaska you'll probably be dependent on food and supplies being imported from the lower-48 for a good many decades. That area is far from self-sufficient when it comes to anything resembling a "modern" lifestyle. Any disruption down here might shut off resupplies from here to there leaving Alaskans to either freeze or starve to death. Think of it as Puerto Rico x10. If an area is far enough away and some political explanation can be concocted why "they should help themselves" or "we've already done enough" ... nothing will be done.

In that sense, it makes sense to live near political power centers. In general, rich/powerful people get bailed out. The poor(*) are left to fend for themselves. I don't think I'm saying anything new here. However, we're so used to being "rich and powerful" that we cannot imagine that we---by which I mean the low-information western middle class---will be part of the "poor club" a few decades from now because it's all relative. Compare the responses to Katrina, Sandy, and Maria. The respective attention they received from Washington was not coincidental.

(*) By poor, I don't mean for lack of financial capital.

In case of a nuclear attack, my strategy would be to walk into the light.

theanimal
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by theanimal »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Tue Oct 09, 2018 7:59 am
Why? Months long nights? Grizzly bears? No mega stores?
All the ways that make Alaska unique and stand out are also what drive many away. There are way more mosquitoes in the summer than any other state, the darkness is seemingly never ending in winter and even with substantial warming Alaska will remain very cold for most of the year. Energy requirements are more substantial and food resources are limited. These are just a few reasons.
The average person in the urban areas on AK has lived here less than 5 yrs. This is a state where many come to make lots of money or experiences before heading elsewhere. And we are still in relatively prosperous times...

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Okay, previous edit was a little too cynical.

Anyways, I guess my possible PhD topic about using climate resilient cities in the CEE are more important now than ever.

BRUTE
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by BRUTE »

https://www.instituteforenergyresearch. ... -nordhaus/
William Nordhaus just won the Nobel for his work on basically inventing the economics of climate change. But while Nordhaus’ model shows that even a ceiling of 2° Celsius is too aggressive—with the costs outweighing the benefits—the media breathlessly tells the world that the latest “science” from the IPCC shows humanity that we have about a decade to implement draconian measures if we are going to achieve the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°Celsius.

jacob
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by jacob »

@brute - The link doesn't work (gives me a blank screen).
sourcewatch wrote: The Institute for Energy Research (IER), founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organization registered by Charles G. Koch and Robert L. Bradley Jr., advocates positions on environmental issues including deregulation of utilities, climate change denial, and claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless.

It is a member of the Sustainable Development Network. The IER's President was formerly Director of Public Relations Policy at Enron.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/I ... y_Research

Nordhaus, who was a republican last time I checked btw, has argued FOR a carbon tax for years. However, this is a very unpopular idea on the right as is any tax in general.

In any case, the 1.5C goal is ludicrously optimistic considering the giant size socioeconomic inertia in the human market and political systems. One has to be more than just a little bit bright-sided to hope/assume that humans/human leaders will proactively choose to try to keep the shift under even 2.5C.

Also the media seems to misquote/misunderstand the report when headlines say [paraphrased] "we have until 2030 to keep the world from ...". No, we don't have 12 years before we have to figure out a solution. 2030 is the milestone for when half the solution already has to have been implemented. Basically we had until 1990 to solve the 1.5C problem. 1.5C is already baked into the cake at this point.

Of course it's going to be much more expensive to "treat" when we wait until the last possible moment before we do anything. Heroic solutions always cost more. Treating stage II cancer inevitable costs more than dealing with stage I which against costs more than certain lifestyle changes. We have very ironically arrived in a situation where it will always be too costly to get out, so we might as well party on. This is also called a social trap and we're definitely in it at this point.

vexed87
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by vexed87 »

I've mentioned it hear before, but it warrants another post where more eyes will see it. Carbon taxes are also unpopular for some on the left because they disproportionately and unfairly impact the poor the hardest. It's a bit like when demand destruction kicks in when oil reaches $100/barrel, the worst off are priced out oil of products, perversely the rich can go on consuming as freely as they wish, after all they can afford the hit so long as their income isn't compromised. This is obviously not a good basis for emission reduction or social harmony. We already know the rich consume the most energy.

We should not settle on Carbon Taxes as the only solution, instead we should consider a system such as (author of Lean Logic) David Fleming's TEQS, short for Tradable Energy Quotas, which is based on rationing, not taxes. It actively incentivises households and business to save energy, and has mechanisms that permit surplus energy to be sold on to the highest bidder. Whilst energy is strictly rationed, interested parties can acquire more without resorting to shady black market practices. So the poorest gain from being energy savvy, the rich can consume more so long as it's available, whilst on a state or regional level, total energy use it ratcheted down in an equitable manner. By forecasting a few years in advance, and giving people reduction targets to aim for, they are empowered to find ways to save energy, any energy saved can be sold on for a personal windfall, or could be reinvested in some other manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradable_Energy_Quotas
https://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/teqs/

This would require states or regions to buy their energy wholesale, and then implement a technological system to manage the rationing and resale markets, but it's perfectly feasible. Think an account linked credit card specifically used to swipe at the gas pump, and a digital meter, similar to prepay meters here in the UK for your home energy supply. The links go into much more detail.

If we are to meet carbon 'budgets', we need to be putting in a system like this yesterday. Maybe a system like this is a bit of a pipe dream, because if it collapses the growth dependant economy, we may as well just shut down the grid... I don't know. Maybe this is why taxes are the preferred option. Little changes. It just seems irresponsible to do nothing either way. I like this system, because it enables a bottom up approach, people can find their own ways to use their energy quota (no need to alternating reg. plate driving days) but there are tangible limits imposed from above, so the top-downers win too. It's not going to convince climate deniers either, but it will help them manager supply constraints fairly.

Campitor
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by Campitor »

Too many humans. And too many humans doing bad stuff. Perhaps climate disaster is precisely needed to thin the population to < 3billion. I always wondered how lazy, stupid, and wasteful people evolved. I ponder this frequently and I always arrive at the same conclusion. We have evolved out of the natural selection processes that limited lazy/stupid/wasteful people; bad behavior doesn't sufficiently trigger the Darwin award. Imagine how environmentally aware people would be if we could take a person's total daily carbon output and pipe it directly into his/her lungs at the end of the day? I bet people would learn how to be "green" quickly.

Increases in technology and population allowed the wasteful/stupid/lazy to survive and consume the overabundance produced by the smart/industrious/conscientious people. As time passed and populations increased, the lack of negative repercussions to the lazy/stupid/wasteful incentivized more people to be stupid/lazy/wasteful. We hit 1 billion in the year 1804. Think about that. All of human history and we only reached 1 billion in 1804. But it only took 207 years to hit 7 billion (2011). Too many people. Too many lazy/stupid/wasteful people.

When the climate change tipping point reaches apocalyptic levels (boiling frog..sigh) I believe the universal Pareto principle will apply: 80% of the population will die and the 20% that are left will be the smart/industrious/conscientious people sprinkled with a bit of ruthlessness. On the bright side, it will be a great incubator of ideas for learning to live in an inhospitable and limited biosphere which will help pave the science toward colonizing space if that is at all possible. Eventually, if we don't leave the planet, the sun's expansion into a red-giant will kill us anyways. And if we're still around for the next several billions years, the impending collision with the Andromeda galaxy may do us in. Nothing lasts forever. Too bad humanity sucks at being good planetary stewards.

A friend once told me that humanity is more like yeast than cancer. Cancer kills you by invading healthy cells, replicating itself, and disrupting cell function. Yeast kills itself by consuming something nourishing (sugar) and then shitting out alcohol. Humanity is yeast - we consume our natural resources and shit out pollution. Perhaps this should be the climate change slogan: "Don't be the yeast."
Last edited by Campitor on Fri Oct 12, 2018 8:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

jacob
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by jacob »

@vexed87/Campitor - The question of equity, that is, the distribution of goods and bads between people in space (myCountry/yourCountry, rich/poor) and time (we/ourChildren/theirChildren/...) is something that's included in the IPCC (and also in the Pope's Laudato Si). By doing that they become political. I think this a mistake because it introduces a constraint on the solution-space. This constraint is why no progress has been made for 40 years even though the scientific conclusions have remained the same.

There's appears to be no political solution in terms of how to cut the pie fairly between the few who eat a lot per person but does not eat as much in total as the many who eat a little per person for a large sum total. <= Is the essence of the argument. Any talk of carbon taxes or dividends are just fancy ways of trying to decide on the pie-question wrt us vs them in space and time. Humans have attempted political solutions to such problems for thousands of years on things much simpler than climate change.

As long as this predicament keeps being framed as requiring a political solution, I'm rather sure that nothing will be done. See e.g. D5.4 in the summary for policy makers which is all they'll read anyway. Another more realistic solution is war which is of course just politics by other means... but maybe they should be discussing this in other places than just the Pentagon.

chenda
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by chenda »

@campitor you may be right, though I genuinely remain hopeful that something like Frashokereti may one day occur, and we can get a permanent solution. Or perhaps its all an illusion and we end up in a state of eternal bliss eventually. This life is probably a good one to choose for liberation from reincarnation, if you believe in such things.

Campitor
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Re: IPCC Report

Post by Campitor »

@Jacob

I agree that a scientific solution coupled with an increased social consciousness is required to reach a solution but I don't see that occurring without a political push. People will not put up with less goods/services or increased costs unless their are immediate effects to their quality of life when they abuse their carbon footprint; there are no immediate negative feedback loops to incentivize better behavior. And I'm highly doubtful that any political push will be forthcoming until it's too late. Too paraphrase a senior citizen who shot dead 1 out of 2 home invaders: "Sometimes it requires planting someone in the dirt before the consequences of bad actions are understood." It's going to take a Book of Revelation style scenario to kill enough of us to convince people to change; whatever bad actors are left won't matter much in regards to carbon footprints.

@chenda

I hope we evolve past our worst behaviors someday. Part of me is optimistic but the other part of me thinks that Frashokereti will probably occur without humanity in existence - we let emotions trump reason too much.

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