from the the-earth,-the-earth,-the-earth-is-on-fire dept.
Chatham House's Climate Change Risk Asessment 2021:
If emissions follow the trajectory set by current NDCs, there is a less than five per cent chance of keeping temperatures well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and less than one per cent chance of reaching the 1.5°C target set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.
[...] Unless NDCs are dramatically increased, and policy and delivery mechanisms are commensurately revised, many of the impacts described in this research paper are likely to be locked in by 2040 and become so severe they go beyond the limits of what nations can adapt to.
[...] If emissions do not come down drastically before 2030, then by 2040 some 3.9 billion people are likely to experience major heatwaves, 12 times more than the historic average. By the 2030s, 400 million people globally each year are likely to be exposed to temperatures exceeding the workability threshold. Also by the 2030s, the number of people on the planet exposed to heat stress exceeding the survivability threshold is likely to surpass 10 million a year.
To meet global demand, agriculture will need to produce almost 50 per cent more food by 2050. However, yields could decline by 30 per cent in the absence of dramatic emissions reductions. By 2040, the average proportion of global cropland affected by severe drought will likely rise to 32 per cent a year, more than three times the historic average.
Download the full report (pdf).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @05:57AM (2 children)
I always cum first.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Tork on Monday September 27 2021, @05:59AM (1 child)
That'll always be true until you have a partner.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @06:16AM
two weeks
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @06:24AM (2 children)
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Thanks, Grandma!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @06:45AM (1 child)
Is this what you call "poisoning the database?"
Or are you trying to get the three letter freaks to take notice?
Ether way your a looser!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @07:22AM
As opposed to a tighter?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday September 27 2021, @06:25AM (21 children)
Chances are that I'll be dead by then, so that's ok.
--signed, average politician currently in power
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday September 27 2021, @08:28AM (19 children)
I don't think this is a demographic problem so much as it's pretty much ingrained in our psyche; the less extreme concepts of utilitarianism and doing things for the greater good are fine when it doesn't personally cost us anything, but all too often go straight out of window when there's a chance of personal gain if we're selfish. That's not going to be fixed by a bunch of politicians sitting around in Glasgow for COP26 next month, no matter what their average age is (about 50 for UK MP, BTW, - so most will see 2040) or how grandiose the pledges they make, but almost certainly won't deliver on, are. You *might* be able to legislate some of it, or maybe apply subsidies and taxes more judiciously to make environmentally damaging substances or actions prohibitively expensive, but fixing the underlying problem that drives the inaction isn't something that can be easily fixed.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday September 27 2021, @09:04AM
Yes.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday September 27 2021, @10:46AM (6 children)
You do know that people generally don't plan 20 years into the future, don't you? How long have we been telling people that smoking isn't just maybe going to kill them but WILL kill them, and still they don't care? Same for fast food and other unhealthy habits.
People don't care about the future, all they want is an instant gratification fix. It's almost like they're 5 year olds that never grew up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @11:14AM
"Our future selves are strangers to us.
This isn’t some poetic metaphor; it’s a neurological fact. FMRI studies suggest that when you imagine your future self, your brain does something weird: It stops acting as if you’re thinking about yourself. Instead, it starts acting as if you’re thinking about a completely different person."
Ref: https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/why-people-are-so-bad-at-thinking-about-the-future.html [slate.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by HiThere on Monday September 27 2021, @08:05PM (3 children)
Smoking actually *is* in the "this will probably eventually kill you, but may not" category. Some people have smoked from their 20's (or earlier) well into their 90's without experiencing significant problems. Not many, but some. (I don't know how much they smoked, and this is based on individual self-reported life histories, but it's not *extremely* rare.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Monday September 27 2021, @09:01PM (2 children)
There's also people who fell out of tall buildings and survived. But it still isn't something I'd recommend as a life prolonging measure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @11:36PM
I would, if the building were on fire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @04:59AM
Meh. Tobacco's got several hundred years of worldwide pandemic-level use, and easily 1000+ demonstrable historical use, seems remarkably safe all things considered
(Score: 2) by http on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:46AM
And yet, still people manage to quit smoking before they get cancer. So obviously they do care.
It's not hard to think better of people, most days you just have to pay attention.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Monday September 27 2021, @01:44PM (10 children)
I think this story illustrates that the short term thinking goes beyond greed. Notice all the sacrifice we're supposed to be doing because scary stuff "are likely to be" happening. It's typical Chicken Little rhetoric without regard for evidence or the cost of the solutions (in particular, that poverty induces by climate change solutions leads to higher population growth).
The problem with this narrative is that climate change is not following the plan. We are already warming at a rate below prediction.
I'm tired of the blinkered thinking that assumes that disagreement means immoral thought or behavior. Show us you're long term thinking first before complaining that others aren't.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday September 27 2021, @02:58PM (9 children)
There's a lot of FUD, to be sure, but predictions are also a moving feast. We might not be meeting the targets set by the Paris Accords and the like, but humanity as a whole is still engaging in some pretty significant efforts to limit the damage, and that is going to show up in the data sooner or later. I guess it's kind of similar to Y2K, where people claimed after the fact that it was all a false alarm without acknowledging the vast amount of effort put into identifying and fixing Y2K related issues that absolutely would have caused issues when the clocks rolled over if they were ignored.
The question has never been about whether we *can* do this; we've always been able to do it, and we still can do it for that matter. The real question is whether we have the *will* to do this, and if that dip in the predicted trend really is due to our efforts so far, whether we have the will to take it to the next level. And we'd better decide that soon, because the longer we kick the can down the road, the harder it's going to get, and at some point we will almost certainly start to cross some points of no return.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 27 2021, @04:34PM (8 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:54PM (5 children)
"Business as usual actually solves a lot of these problems because it's addressing the big problems: poverty and overpopulation."
I wonder if this counts as your dumbest comment yet?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday September 27 2021, @06:50PM (4 children)
Seems a shame to me to turn away from that and do a bunch of negative value stuff that makes even the petty concerns worse.
(Score: 3, Touché) by sjames on Monday September 27 2021, @08:38PM (3 children)
If it's fighting poverty and overpopulatiopn, it's losing badly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:59AM (2 children)
Here's what "losing badly" means in those terms. First, every country in the world experiences large declines in human fertility (and those declines in human fertility are ongoing). Second, roughly two thirds of humanity increased their net income, adjusted for inflation and cost of living, by 30% or more in a recent two decade period (1988-2008). I guess I shouldn't be surprised when people who get it wrong about climate change, also get other major things wrong about the world?
Link [soylentnews.org].
I think here there are four big things getting ignored by the Chatham House assessment.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:49AM (1 child)
Redefining terms is not the same as solving the problem.
War by proxy is still war.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:47PM
Except when it's not a war of any sort at all. The problem here is that your label of "badly losing" is just wrong not some sort of semantics quibbling over what sort of "badly losing" qualifies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Monday September 27 2021, @07:57PM (1 child)
Educating women seems to do a lot against population growth. But there are parts of the world where that is definitely not business as usual.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:56PM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday September 27 2021, @10:51AM
"After me, the deluge. Literally."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MIRV888 on Monday September 27 2021, @06:56AM (3 children)
This is the world she inherits from me (us).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:04AM
Nah. It's the few billion who live without power (electrical, political, or otherwise), and not internet who are going to be screwed. The global elite (most of us here) will coast on with only marginal unpleasantness and some angry shouty bits without much actually happening.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:00AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Wednesday September 29 2021, @04:03AM
Or get drafted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @11:32AM (11 children)
...of bad predictions.
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/ [cei.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by oumuamua on Monday September 27 2021, @01:27PM (8 children)
Let me just focus on one of those predictions;
* famine from overpopulation predicted by Paul Ehrlich.
First of all, the most populous country in the world did listen and take action, and in doing so, help stop the prediction from coming true.
Technology was the second thing that helped ward off famine; there were huge gains in agriculture output.
For the climate crisis, technology may indeed rescue us again. However, note a key difference:
For the famine crisis, each improvement to crop yield was quickly adopted because it increased profit.
For the climate crisis, each improvement to reduce CO2 is typically not cost competitive and requires legislation or tax credits to get adopted.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @02:09PM (6 children)
Yes, ignore the 50+ years of (failed) doom-and-gloom predictions, and let's assume that this time they get it right.
I would note that China's population is almost double what it was in 1970, which is only slightly less than the world as a whole (3.6 billion to >7.3 billion). And, I would note that China is now pushing their population to have more children. The fact that you would bring up the totalitarian "one-child" policy as a good thing is scary.
The world's population is 2.5 times what it was when I was born (~1960), and the people are better fed than ever before.
I've been hearing this fear-porn for my entire life, and it's been consistently wrong. I see no reason to assume this is any better.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:12PM (3 children)
I've never had a car accident in 50 years of driving, I see no reason to wear a seatbelt
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:12PM (2 children)
I've never been cursed by a witch, either.
Doesn't mean we don't need as a society to be on guard against witches.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday September 27 2021, @08:09PM (1 child)
How do you know?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:01AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:57PM (1 child)
Then you're not paying attention to any of the metrics that matter, just superficial bullshit like the stock market and vegetable availability. Wonder if you'll be one of the ones saying "why didn't they tell us this was going to happen?"
Or worse, the world will put a LOT of work into fixing these problems and you'll say "See? Told you it was no big deal."
Either way, top kek budday.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:02AM
Currently, it looks like the world has put a LOT of work into it and made things worse. Fortunately, this is having the effect of discrediting urgent climate change.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday September 27 2021, @04:40PM
This really is reason number one. And it's a classic failed prognosticator move: "I'm right once we ignore all those reasons I'm wrong." So why aren't we going to technology our way out of the mild problems mentioned above?
We should solve this that particular way because?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:52PM (1 child)
Headline you didn't get:
Chatham House ignores that currently-uninhabitable land will be suitable for settling by 2040
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday September 27 2021, @08:15PM
While true
1) That land is already owned by someone.
2) Less land will become suitable than becomes unsuitable.
Both claims are reasonably obvious if you consider that the top 100 ft (or m) of a mountain contains a lot less surface area than the bottom 100 ft. You can apply that by analogy to several different things, like the land near the equator and the land more distant from it, or the land at sea level and the land high above sea level. Etc. There are also lots of other reasons, like "We've put a lot of effort improving the habitability of the land where we currently live.".
The first claim is less a geometric fact, but is even more obvious when you read about countries arguing to claim land that is below sea level.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @12:32PM (2 children)
Are you ready to freeze to death this winter to avoid "experiencing major heatwaves by 2040"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @08:11PM (1 child)
I'm willing to wear wool indoors.
I live in Canada. Southern; we rarely hit lower than -20 here.
We keep the house above freezing so pipes don't burst (sometimes we leave a drip in the coldest winter in one bathroom). We wear wool. And our fridge rarely turns on when we open it in the winter. :)
Anyways, we're pretty freaky, but literally your question is nonsense. Wear wool, and let it hit 5C before turning the heat on, and life is golden.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:13AM
You need be quite crazy to call that life.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 27 2021, @01:33PM (8 children)
Did Chatham House also find that even huger swaths of land will become habitable by 2040?
Russia and Canada are the largest countries on Earth. Their populations are concentrated in small, more clement areas. If the climate warms up, giant stretches of their hinterland will become viable.
Climate change taketh away, but it can also giveth.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:55PM (1 child)
And, in your scenario Russia is expected to welcome tens of millions of climate refugees with open arms?
The US welcoming 10s of millions of their brothers and sisters from the south?
Right.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Captival on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:45AM
>The US welcoming 10s of millions of their brothers and sisters from the south?
We're already fucking doing that now!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:42PM (4 children)
Not really. Almost all of the arable land in Canada is already being used for agriculture, and I suspect it's the same thing for Russia. 90% of Canada is an agricultural wasteland due to geology-most of Canada is rocky & rugged Canadian Shield, or mountains, or marshes & lakes-places where the topsoil is nonexistent, too thin, or too poor in quality to grow much of any sort of food crop.
The reason why agriculture in Canada occurs mainly in the south is because most of the arable land happens to exist in the south. The Toronto area has some of the richest farmland in the world, but unfortunately and ridiculously and stupidly it is being paved over due to unfettered urban expansion. Farming in Saskatchewan and Manitoba only occurs in the south because that's where the prairie soil is. North of that is the non-farmable rugged and rocky exposed bedrock called the Canadian shield. Alberta is the only province where the great plains stretch all the way to the northern border, and most of that is already being farmed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @08:15PM
Yeah, the Canadian shield and the permafrost aren't going to sprout wheat any decade soon.
Or any century soon.
Or any millennium soon!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @04:20PM (2 children)
I didn't think about it, but this "sounds right."
The area to the north which will "become arable" will eventually become arable, but only in ecological/geological time scales. If the temperature, rainfall, etc were ideal, historically it was a rocky area with nothing living there. It takes time for initial low-resource-need plants and animals to grow there, die, and decomposes... to provide resources for medium-resource-need plants and animals to grow... which eventually becomes high-resource-need plants and animals.
As an example, how long does it take for plants to start growing on roads in the middle of current farm country? And that's with lush vegetation a few meters beside it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:59AM
We already have that with glaciers and tundra. The glaciers created a huge amount of high nutrition, plant-friendly dirt, and tundra over the past 10k years created a layer of "low-resource-need plants and animals" to check off your box. I guess nobody has yet figured out how prairie exists in areas that used to be under a kilometer of ice 10k years ago with rocks and no plants or animals. Well, that process didn't get turned off by the universe since.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @02:39PM
From what I've seen less than a few years if it's a tropical rainforest climate.
So maybe Canada just ain't warm enough yet? ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:57PM
They become ~sort of~ viable. Melted permafrost is going to be shit for growing crops, and the taiga will of course burn and make life literally hellish. Plus there's the problem of yearly sunlight patterns.
Right now they still import soil and water into the rapidly desertifying CA central valley purely because the sunlight is just right for growing certain crops.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @01:56PM
If only I could place a long bet with some of the people on this site and claim it when the bet is due.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @01:57PM (2 children)
what needs calculations is the energy cost of creating/manufacturing energy storage, specifically batteries.
how much kwh goes into making storage that can store 1 kwh and how long will this storage last (charge and discharge cycles).
we have universal sun, even the rich can sell their once-thru fossile assets in form of stocks and bonds (of those companies), get their hands dirty and buy a "slab of silicon" and a battery and become self sufficient.
alas it is easier to make a quick phone call to their "high net worth" agent, use militarily protected money (yes, fiat money only has value because a domestic military protects it and the civilian clubbermint that conjures it) to "buy" rewards in form of "bond coupons" and "dividents" that are then transformed into supporting those investments in form of "energy gusseling" activities.
as long as this works and it provides "let the good times role" nothing will change.
anyways, the natrium/sodium battery(*) technology is in some locked drawer but the once-thru carbon destruction cow has not been milked to death yet ...
(*) it is one below lithium and the oceans are full of it. > 70%(?) of planet surface is salty ocean water.
it's a conspiracy(tm).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:12PM (1 child)
it would be hilerious and tragic at the same time if it turns out that antrazit (hard coal) would be THE ingridient for sodium/natrium batteries (along with less earth abundant titanium).
if the future history books would then refer to the present time as governed by certified psychopaths doing everything possible to "disappear" it so it (antrazit) and crazy abundant sea-salt never meet and cheap electricity storage would never see the light of day, will remain to be seen :)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday September 27 2021, @08:02PM
Do you mean anthracite?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @02:16PM (3 children)
What's that? It sounds like some trendy nouveau "French country" restaurant that serves pureed goose innards or something.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:48PM (2 children)
It's the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the British version of the Council on Foreign Relations which was originally situated in (you guessed correctly) Chatham House. A continuation of Lord Milner's Round Table, it's always been a concentration of elitist Imperialist and Globalist turds. Noticeably expanding from Nationalist Empire Federalism to embrace Fabian Socialism with the appointment of Arnold Toynbee (grandfather of Guardian journalist and current deputy treasurer of the Fabian Society - Polly Toynbee).
Why is this history important? The Empire Federalists and Fabians had a common goal, the "collective" ownership of land. Correctly understood as the theft of private land by the state. "You will own nothing and you will be happy"! A very "likely" report.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:00PM (1 child)
It is not theft to take back what is rightfully yours from thieves.
Suggested reading:
"What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government" Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
La propriété, c'est le vol! (Property is theft!)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:09PM
Is it theft when I steal it back from the govt officials? Oh, of course, it's THEIR property, sorry, OUR property, where OUR means it's not mine: the most exclusive OUR.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:29AM (1 child)
More fearmongering to force global emissions reduction? Why aren't they calling out China and India - both having the 100 cities with most polluted air. Clearly, preaching to responsible countries is cowardly if you don't call out the real culprits. Until then, STFU with your screaming at nations that are continuing to reduce emissions.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Wednesday September 29 2021, @04:12AM
The science behind the atmosphere heating up is pretty straightforward, and is largely not disputed.
You can try to do something, or you can just throw your hands in the air and say 'f*ck it'.
Trying is how sh1t gets done.