First you said that it was talked about all the time, which it isn’t.
It's widely recognised that capitalism and the over-consumption it promotes is the root cause of climate change, but suggesting we can't combat climate change without destroying capitalism is yet another excuse for doing nothing. It's the same as saying 'we're all doomed anyway so why bother'.
You keep on making that bogus claim. Understanding the severe limitations of our current approach and the fact it will make no significant difference is not the same as doing nothing.
Remember global emmisions need to halve to even stabilise at 2C rise. that means in the west our emmissions need to far more than halve
suggesting we can’t combat climate change without destroying capitalism
Doesn't necessarily mean destroying capitalism but understanding the cause and addressing it.
I'd say you're wrong there @copa - the ice core data is very accurate. Ice cores can be taken from different points over a large geographical area (Greenland to Antarctica) and in several different ways. So the data going back thousands of years is reliable.
It's lengthy but this is a good article on it from what I think you'll agree is a reputable source. It's also written in a popular science style so is an easy read.
Sorry @Daffy; I should have been clearer. Moho = motorhome. That's a lot of plastic, metal and fibreglass wrapped up among a carbon footprint larger than most of my life. But hey, they bought a Tesla battery to replace the first house battery that was only a year old...
No one among us is perfect, we're (almost) all doing quite a few things to help this situation but probably everyone could and perhaps should do more.
I've for years been looking forward to riding the Tour Divide on my retirement. I think that plan is going to have to be cancelled and replaced with a very much closer to home option. And as I've said before, the Mrs and I chose not to have any children for environmental reasons as over 30 years ago we could already see the damage each new rich westerner does and that their world was going to be wrecked by the time they grew older.
Understanding the severe limitations of our current approach and the fact it will make no significant difference is not the same as doing nothing.
TJ I really don't know what it is you're trying to say. All that's coming across is 'we're doomed because we're not doing enough'. I agree, current efforts are nowhere near where they need to be (obviously), but there is significant opportunity to ramp up efforts in the next decade. This stuff is exponential, and we're still in the flat bit of the curve where progress seems slow and insufficient.
", this is a thread about how climate change will play out for people that accept the consensus on climate change, hence the title"
Is it going to play out any differently for those of us who don't accept the consensus?
Good article @munrobiker
"So the data going back thousands of years is reliable."
I don't think we can say that. We have around 300 years of actual data and forecast data going back much further. But there's a fundamental difference between the two.
The forecasts may be extremely reliable but we don't know. It's not discounting them but to avoid presenting them as something they're not.
dazh
Try reading and listening?
- its about being realistic. "efforts will ramp up over the next decade" too little too late. We should have been doing this 30 years ago. If thats the best you can hope for then billions will die
Its about getting folk to understand. Its needs individual efforts, it needs governmental efforts, it needs intergovernmental efforts or by the time your children grow up much of the planet will be uninhabitable.
its a bout reversing attitudes and accepting that we cannot solve the climate crisis without massive lifestyle change. All this stuff is an imperative. Start from that understanding and the level of urgency. Its the number 1 issue facing humanity and stop pretending that fiddling around the edges will make a significant differnce
I don’t think we can say that. We have around 300 years of actual data and forecast data going back much further.
it’s not forecast data. It’s actual measurement of air trapped within ice at the time it was formed. It’s using the fossil record to see how species that’s have very specific environmental living conditions have migrated to find them.
My points are the same as TJs - don't confuse the fact that I think it won't be solved (because of lack of will/urgency/priority) from government and the people of the world with not trying to solve it.
We should be trying to solve it, what else can we do, but as TJ says - nobody is even suggesting the level of change that is required to make a significant positive impact on it.
What i really hate about the debate is it's either the planet will die/survive vs humanity will die/survive whereas the real long term loss is the irreversible loss of genetic diversity/potential. For all we know we may have already eliminated the only chance for truly intelligent life in the universe.
it’s not forecast data
Estimated data is probably more accurate. It's not a recording of the actual temperature at the time; it's a prediction/estimate based on lots of different factors. And which can be interpreted in different ways, using different models.
There's always been loss and renewal, update of genetic diversity tho' . It has been, and will be different to the snapshot that is the world as it is but you think the world is more or less diverse than say 150 million years ago?
I don't understand the intelligent life comment
Neither of the above are denial of rapid climate change. How will that affect those who don't accept the concensus - probably badly
@suburbanreuben, a grammatical edit, just in case you weren't joking
this is a thread for people that accept the consensus on climate change to discuss how climate change will play out, hence the title
climate deniers, skeptics, or free thinkers, whatever they want to call themselves, are as useful here as creationists are in a debate about evolution
neither side is going to change their mind on the fundamentals
I used to be very pessimistic about this situation. Thing is that you guys are right, the current situation won’t be solved by the current efforts. However with AGI and quantum computers apparently imminent some new solutions are hopefully coming
Michio Kaku says a modern computer compared to a quantum computer will be like an abacus compared to the modern pc. Let that sink in for a minute
That is of course not to say we shouldn’t do what we can to avoid damaging the environment, but it is at least a more positive outlook
AGI can also of course wipe us out, but I guess that would probably solve the problem anyway…
That is the big concern with AGI, the solution to climate change is an easy one - remove the humans. Whereas humans may not opt for that, AGI in control of the means to do so would do.
There’s always been loss and renewal, update of genetic diversity tho’ . It has been, and will be different to the snapshot that is the world as it is but you think the world is more or less diverse than say 150 million years ago?
There's always been climate change too, but this is only "avoidable" anthropogenic example
However with AGI and quantum computers apparently imminent some new solutions are hopefully coming
Will these new technologies replace your gas centrtal heating, ICE car, holiday flights, plasic packaging and meat rich diet?
OK, so most people on this thread seem to accept that we are in for a rough ride due to climate change. Just to cheer everyone up we could have bigger problems from soil degradation and erosion, antimicrobial resistance or another global pandemic.
Not just a rough ride - billions to die. Seriously degraded lifestyles for those that survive
However with AGI and quantum computers apparently imminent some new solutions are hopefully coming
How much cooling energy required to cool the quantum computers? Anyway, aren't they supposed to be cloning dinosaurs as a new food supply? 🤣
What would they actually be used for? Modelling societies reaction to various solutions? Modelling the outcome of various solutions (anyone else seen the Armstrong and Miller 'Kill all the Poor' sketch? 😂).
I think that movie Elysium is the closest prediction of what we'll see, Elon Musk and his buddies in some protected enclave somewhere with a vast military devoted to protecting their water/energy/food supplies. Or better yet, maybe the 'Don't Look Up' finale (no spoilers) 😎
the world is more or less diverse than say 150 million years ago?
If we're talking biodiversity, then yes, drastically. Biodiversity has plummeted at the same time temperature has increased (although not exclusively due to it, it's one of many reasons. Modern agriculture methods led by demand from consumers has a lot to answer for here as does our horrendous treatment of soil.).
Strangely, no one really talks about this in the same way. People don't seem as interested and I'm surprised because people seem to react to suffering of animals better than invisible threats like increasing temperature.
Methane belched from cattle is not adding new carbon to the atmosphere. It is part of the natural cycling of carbon through the biogenic carbon cycle. Eating meat from well managed grass-fed sources is therefore neither carbon positive nor carbon negative.
Jesus Christ! Really, you really typed that as a serious counter to climate change? You do realise that the number of cows on the planet isn’t natural don’t you? That the amount of land dedicated to them and to feeding them isn’t healthy for the planet. That the growth cycle to maturity is long and therefore Carbon intensive.
As for the good old “earth has warmed before” fantastic argument. Now explain the rapid change in temperature that just so happens to track alongside the Industrial Revolution. It would also be good if you understood Milankovitch cycles and how they account for variance in climate.
There’s nothing worse than people spouting absolute shite! Guessing you’re one of the “everyone is entitled to their opinion” you’re not when it is utterly ultracrepidarian. Boils my piss. I have a basic GCSE level education. It’s no excuse for being an uneducated fool. Grow up and do some actual research.
To the ops point, we have a reasonably well researched example from recent history of what it may look like, the Arab spring has been attributed or was significantly exacerbated by climate change with prolonged droughts, crop failure, food inflation, human migration pressures and government failure to provide basic needs of its citizen leading to mass civil unrest. What followed was civil war, regime change, huge uprisings in multiple countries and mass migration leading up to us getting those pictures of lines of refugees being used as evidence of the need for brexit and stoking populism. A decade later the effects are still being felt. So it's reasonable to extrapolate from there as these events become more frequent, impact multiple areas at once, become more intense and last longer.
Woke FT reporting that
A study by the International Labour Organization, the UN agency for workers, projected that by 2030, the equivalent of more than 2 per cent of total working hours worldwide would be lost every year, either because it is too hot to work or because workers have to work at a slower pace.
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"Tourists in the back of a lorry being evacuated."
Sorry, but the schadenfreude here is delightful.
The fires put carbon-offsetting tree-planting strategies into perspective. The Canadian wildfires have burned an area similar to Portugal. We're into a vicious circle.
Why the schadenfreude?
You can see your destination is burning on the news yet you still get on a plane, go there, then express surprise when the inevitable happens. I'm struggling for a metaphor....
Maybe it's just people not quite understanding what's going on around them? I'm sure random holiday makers are not climate scientists or fully aware of the situation at hand. I'm sure that Jet2 or whoever sold them the holiday assured them it was safe, after all they need their revenue.
I'm doing my bit for the planet by not having children, the planet will recover eventually if there's less of us to consume it. With the current trajectory how can anyone stand there and justify having children?
I’m doing my bit for the planet by not having children
I presume you'll be foregoing your state pension, and other things that are paid for and provided by young people, and working until you die? Honestly this idea that not having kids is somehow doing us all a favour is utter bullshit. The planet can easily cope with a large human population living sustainable lifestyles. What it can't cope with is a large population living their lives as if natural resources are infinite or that natural limitations don't apply to them.
You are frequently guilty of using a reductive argument style
People in glasshouses and all that
🤦♂️
What it can’t cope with is a large population living their lives as if natural resources are infinite or that natural limitations don’t apply to them.
How do you propose we should apportion an appropriate amount of resource to each individual? What even is an appropriate amount? How do you make sure that amount makes it to each individual and who calculates it?
At least by not having kids I know that after I die my contribution will be zero rather than some indeterminate but positive number.
At least by not having kids I know that after I die my contribution will be zero rather than some indeterminate but positive number.
So why wait til you die? The logical endpoint of the not having kids argument is suicide and killing as many others as you can before you remove yourself. If you don’t want kids then fine, but don’t pretend it’s some sort of ethical action to help with the climate change issue.
In fact you can easily argue that more kids is the solution. One of the major issues in western societies is that policy is focused on keeping old people in the manner in which they’re accustomed. We need more young people to move the focus to issues which they’re concerned about.
The logical endpoint of the not having kids argument is suicide and killing as many others as you can before you remove yourself
See my previous post.... Your habit of throwing these metaphorical hand grenades into threads is getting very boring now.
And besides, as mentioned by daffy earlier in the thread, it’s young people who are leading the effort and creating the solutions to prevent catastrophic climate change. Climate change which has been caused by old people. If we think reducing the population is the answer then we’re looking in the wrong place.
If we think reducing the population is the answer then we’re looking in the wrong place.
You're reducing it to an ethical argument rather than a planet first scientific argument. Are we trying to increase the number of happy people on the planet, or increase how happy the people already on it are? There are a lot of nuances to that.
I’m doing my bit for the planet by not having children
I'm all for not having kids for environmental reasons, but it doesn't help us much over the next decade or two, where climate action really does have to be rapid. Us existing people have to be a massive part of the change as well.
How do you propose we should apportion an appropriate amount of resource to each individual? What even is an appropriate amount? How do you make sure that amount makes it to each individual and who calculates it?
Exactly how water is apportioned in a drought, if things get really bad.
It is a difficult question, I agree, and raises some very difficult questions about political power. But the lets-just-see-how-bad-things-get alternative is a bit of a gamble.
I hope we never get to that point.
So why wait til you die? The logical endpoint of the not having kids argument is suicide and killing as many others as you can before you remove yourself
That's really not true
That's the same as saying the logical endpoint of your pro-kids argument is banning contraceptives and abortions
Edit: I am aware this responds to two different people, even though it reads like I'm replying to the same person
Natural gas likely almost as bad as coal from a broader emissions perspective
who'd of thunk it, there are no clean fossil fuels 😕
But let's carry on using them until they run out anyway.
Natural gas also happens to be largely sold by crooks such as the Saudis and Russia, surely even if you don't buy into the climate thing you'd think about removing our dependence on those countries anyway?
Oh wait, the US also is a major natural gas producer, so we're doomed to be stuck on it forever lest we upset them too.
Just read this. Not sure how true it is because of Oxfam bias but if it is true, how on earth can Joe public really be blamed for not engaging with the issue?
According to Oxfam, the richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world's population. In other words, just the top 1% of the wealthy managed to steal almost a quarter of the required wealth to address climate change in just two years. Evidently, the rich could *easily* address climate change and not even break a sweat - and worse, they could have done it any time in the last 50 years. Instead, they chose to actively undermine and suppress climate data to continue exploiting the world’s resources for personal wealth. They will live in infamy as the bloated, disgusting, selfish psychopaths that they are, forever on the wrong side of history.
let’s carry on using them until they run out anyway.
Grant shapps coming out today confirming that's his plan
https://www.ft.com/content/407b834e-a503-4de9-acab-fcf88d76dbb3
https://twitter.com/michaelrubin/status/1676363041288462338?s=20
Everyone in attendance agreed with me that e-bikes and wood stoves are terrible for the environment.
This looks cool though if it actually works: https://4401.earth
I’m all for not having kids for environmental reasons, but it doesn’t help us much over the next decade or two, where climate action really does have to be rapid.
But it does unless people are never going to buy anything for their children. They are never going to have food bought for them. They never need clothes, schooling etc. Fewer people if the only real solution and the summer we start the better
Let's face it; Gaia offered us an opportunity to thin the population a couple of years back, and we blew it...
Fewer people if the only real solution
Population is falling in developed nations, and it's been widely forecast for a long time that population will top out then start falling. The problem with making it fall too fast is that it causes big economic problems, and solving those would be very hard indeed.
Yes, we could completely reorganise society so that we didn't have to, but that's even harder still. The real question is where best to focus our efforts and how to achieve our aims. I suspect trying to change western society into a collectivist one rather than individualistic to enable the required climate change mitigation is probably not the best place to focus our efforts right now as whilst it would be effective, it's probably futile and not liable to work long-term.
Let’s face it; Gaia offered us an opportunity to thin the population a couple of years back, and we blew it…
Bit of a daft post. The 1918 Flu pandemic killed around 50M people. Assuming we didn't have vaccines etc during covid it still would've been a drop in the ocean compared to the 8 billion people on the planet.
Fewer people if the only real solution and the summer we start the better
Are you volunteering yourself? The population argument is a red herring. It distracts from the real changes that are necessary and provides an excuse for inaction. Much easier to cull a few billion people than change our lifestyles. 🤷♂️
How do you plan to get people to accept not being allowed to have kids?
I never suggested people shouldn't be allowed to have kids, that's entirely their choice. How you individually choose to support the climate is up to you.
How you individually choose to support the climate is up to you.
In that case, how do you ever expect any meaningful progress to be made to address climate change?
In that case, how do you ever expect any meaningful progress to be made to address climate change?
Education as to the options available and the effectiveness/impact of each, showing people from a young age what they can do and allowing them to decide what options fit their life the best. And teaching personal responsibility.
Telling people what they must do and forcing them just turns people against a cause. It hasn't worked for the last four or so decades so what makes you think that would suddenly change?
Education as to the options available and the effectiveness/impact of each, showing people from a young age what they can do and allowing them to decide what options fit their life the best. And teaching personal responsibility.
Pretty sure we were all taught the importance of not littering and more recently recycling but still I see bins full of mixed waste despite people being provided with the tools to make it simple, verges covered in litter and fly tipping all over the place. Education and personal responsibility don't go very far when pitted against self interest.
Pretty sure we were all taught the importance of not littering and more recently recycling but still I see bins full of mixed waste despite people being provided with the tools to make it simple, verges covered in litter and fly tipping all over the place. Education and personal responsibility don’t go very far when pitted against self interest.
And alcohol prohibition was so successful wasn't it, and the war on drugs.
Yes, we could completely reorganise society so that we didn’t have to, but that’s even harder still.
Unless we do then billions will die. Unless we in the west reduce our energy consumption massively - guess what - billions will die.
Those are the choices. Radically change society or billions will die.
how do you ever expect any meaningful progress to be made to address climate change?
That's kind of the position some of us are taking.
I'm one of six people living in a stretch of six terraced houses down a walkway. The only ones putting out recycling are me (56) and Pat (83). The others (20s-40ish), perfectly decent people, don't bother. Maybe they're taking a stance against sending our plastic waste to be burnt in Turkey or dumped on an Indonesian beach...but I really doubt that much thought has actually gone into it.
flying people into Rhodes on a package tour then evacuating them from a beach via a boat 24 hours later. Argue about your bins all you like, the world has changed.
Look at the population distribution for most developed countries. The population will significantly reduce over the next 20_30 years. China it's going to crash. India is a problem as is most of Africa. I know people from developing nations use less carbon but the population explosion in some of these countries is still an issue.
Short story don't worry about the west's of China's population that is sorting it's self out
Those are the choices. Radically change society or billions will die.
But those are not the choices "we" have to make yet because billions are not dying. When the billions start to die I am sure people will start to see it as a priority. 40 years too late to do anything about it but a priority nonetheless.
People generally don't deal well with thinking about negative future scenarios and see themselves in those positions.
10 000 people a day dying of hunger at present at a conservative estimate, so at least 3 650 000 a year. 345 000 000 suffering from acute hunger which has doubled since 2019 according to charities. Hunger is one "breaking point" indicator to say that the breaking point is right now. Others would be:
Sea temperatures
The multication of forest fires in areas where they were previously rare
The rate of ice melt (16m for the Mer de Glace last year and a spate of "last chance tourism" this year.
CO2 at Hawaii, we know that at current levels a major climatic change is underway.
Rate of sea level rise increasing
Multiplication of extreme weather events
Migration of Humbolt's climatic zones vertically and horizontally
We're in the thick of it and the vast majority of people on this forum are increasing rather than decreasing their carbon footprint - like the rest of the world.
UK news & population: Aggghhhh we're all going to melt and / or drown. Let’s stop breathing and having babies or glue our selves to the road with oil based product to save the world. Can’t run a pivot table, based on opinion with little underlying data. Little to No R&D, innovation, machining ability.
Average sci-fi from the 60-90’s. Let’s invest in R&D to be able to teleport, travel the Galaxy and have an infinite supply of green energy.
Likely one of countries still sending the kids to uni to study engineering instead of social studies will bail out the rest.
IMO best way to contribute is to have kids and educate them so they can work on R&D to solve the problem. Outside that we can just copy what Switzerland have been doing for the last 30yrs or so rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and green wash and pretend we’re making any meaningful impact by drinking from a plastic lined paper straw.
The cause of hunger is not climate change. It is war, corruption, and violence.
Food production has increased ahead of population. Helped by fossil fuel powered machinery and fossil fuel derieved fertilisers.
For example.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/index-of-cereal-production-yield-and-land-use
I'm a little bit confused about how reducing the population leads to economic problems. The environment is my speciality, not economics.
Can someone tell me why if the population reduces, this leads to economic problems? The amount of money in the world doesn't change, and labour will be in greater demand so able to command higher wages so tax revenue won't change much - so what's the problem? And where does the supposed additional cost sit in relation to the enormous additional costs of addressing the climate change worsened by a larger population?
Reduced population does seem like an easy way to reduce climate impact and, while I can't say I care about the economic impact, it doesn't seem to be an argument that stacks up to me.
And alcohol prohibition was so successful wasn’t it, and the war on drugs
We banned leaded petrol and CFC's, hasn't lead to shady characters offering me them behind closed doors
We already completely transformed our heating systems several times last century from coal to town gas to natural gas, each time households were forced to retrofit and managed it
@muntobiker Aging population with not enough people to look after them or cover their pension obligations and health care costs. That’s not taking into account having enough working age people in key worker / critical infrastructure roles.
Hard mode for governments is incentivising families, educating and training from scratch - takes say 21 years annd £££ over multiple governments. Easy mode is to plug gaps with immigration.
And the causes of war, corruption and violence, irc? Syria and the Arab Spring can be attributed to shortages and movements of population due to climatic change. It's a chicken and egg thing. If its cerael resources hadn't become so important economically Ukraine wouldn't have been worth invading. There's a geographical/geological/resource basis to many if not most wars and desertification/food shortages are a driver.
In a place like Mali climatic change is at the very heart of hunger and conflict. The hunger and conflict displaces people who become refugees. Flee or starve to death. The 80% reduction in food production in some areas of the Sahel is due to bush fires and drought, that displaces people and fuels conflict.
I’m a little bit confused about how reducing the population leads to economic problems.
It doesn't as long as old people keep working instead of retiring, and keep working at the same level of productivity as the young people who would replace them. If you reduce the population, then the amount of available work decreases, which leads to a drop in economic output, and then recession, deflation etc. If you reduce the population by reducing the amount of young people then it's even worse because you're removing the most productive demographic in the economy whilst keeping the economically inactive group in the form of retired pensioners who mostly take out of the system rather than put in.
Reduced population does seem like an easy way to reduce climate impact
Fine as long as we reduce the number of old people rather than the young by refusing to have kids. All the people saying they're not having kids to help the planet are achieving the opposite of their stated objective. If you really want to help the planet by contributing to population reduction, then have one or two kids (but not more), bring them up to adulthood, then kill yourself. Simple!
I’m a little bit confused about how reducing the population leads to economic problems
because its been setup as a giant ponzi scheme.
If you really want to help the planet by contributing to population reduction, then have one or two kids (but not more), bring them up to adulthood, then kill yourself. Simple!
Sorry I can't take any points you put forward seriously after that, I think you're just looking to get a rise out of someone rather than debate the points.
I think you’re just looking to get a rise out of someone rather than debate the points.
Nope, I'm arguing against your view that not having kids is a positive action towards preventing climate change. It's not, quite the opposite IMO. I'm also arguing that if population reduction is required to prevent climate change (I don't think it is BTW), then we need to reduce the number of old people, not the young.
Aging population with not enough people to look after them or cover their pension obligations and health care costs. That’s not taking into account having enough working age people in key worker / critical infrastructure roles.
It doesn’t as long as old people keep working instead of retiring, and keep working at the same level of productivity as the young people who would replace them. If you reduce the population, then the amount of available work decreases, which leads to a drop in economic output, and then recession, deflation etc.
So the key problem here is an economic system dependent upon constant economic growth for stability. Which is, in turn, I think, a result of private owership of capital, because the economic gains resulting from increased productivity are captured by a minority, rather than used to decrease working time.
That's what leads to the requirement for population growth, or at least a fixed ratio of workers to dependents.
Theoretically, we could easily use the increases in productivity that technology brings to support an aging population with a smaller pool of workers, but that doesn't work unless the economic benefits of more productive technologies are distrubuted equally.
So the key problem here is an economic system dependent upon constant economic growth for stability.
Yup - hence the dark green "no growth society" philiosophy
Theoretically, the solution is actually very simple
If we can have enough automation of healthcare (AI doctors, radiologists, etc.), food production, distribution of goods in general via self-driving cars, and whatever other things are actually needed for good living standards, then that would free up more than enough people for the care-centric economy an aging population would require
We'd need some sort of universal basic services and income, made possible by these largely automated technologies being collectively owned and democratically managed
If we also had global resource caps of extraction, carbon emissions, and other key pollutants, than researchers like me would be out of a job and could join in helping actual people and their needs, rather than researching problems caused by an economic system no longer fit for purpose
Basically I'm all for AI and robots taking over the world economy and doing things properly
In theory...
Disclaimer -- I have read a lot of Ian M. Banks
Just look at most national size businesses. Annual growth of the company can often be mainly or partly put down to the tactic of continuing the status quo, with a slightly expanded customer base year on year.