Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

The whole scenario is far fetched. We're imagining some egalitarian world (won't happen), in which with today's technology we need to make due with tomorrows resources, but without time to adapt and find alternatives.

More realistically, we need to start making at least some steps. If air travel becomes more expensive, we'll do less of it, and at least try to find alternatives, personally. Society might try to find workarounds, like negative emissions, or construct alternatives (like high-speed rail) that are "good enough", at least for many flights. We might have alternative, emissions free fuel, someday.

But the real point is: this is not going to be as extreme as is sketched simply because inequality isn't going away, and secondly - this is necessarily going to happen gradually, so the impact will be reduced as society will have time to adapt. Let's just hope gradually doesn't mean glacially, because then we'll pay the climate price.

> If prices rise gradually, people will adapt.

I think this is where you and I disagree. I would contend that the average citizen will resist this. I am basing this off what we saw in France when they introduced a very modest fuel tax.

I think this is an issue that would actually unite both the left and the right. I suspect that if we made air travel, meat and fresh (flown-in) produce only available to the wealthiest 0.X% of our population we would see widespread outrage. It would be seen as just another example of inequality.

I love the optimism here, everyone always states this like the tipping point is sure to be in the future. TBH, it seems equally likely to me that the last year we could seriously avoid major climate change was in the early 1990s.

There is simply no simple way to address Climate Change like there was with CFC's in the 90s.

- 1/3 of emissions come China which has an autocratic leadership accountable neither to its people or the global community.

- 70% of emissions come from energy consumption. 35% of all emissions is electricity and heat, and another 15% is construction + manufacturing.

- Even if every mode of transportation was fully electric supplied by 100% nuclear supplied electricity, global emissions would only drop by 15%. (i.e. transportation only accounts for 15% of global emissions).

Have you stopped heating/cooling your house? Moved to a small apartment? Stopped driving a car?

Carbon taxes will also meet friction because:

1. They are actually regressive income taxes. The bottom 90% of the income distribution spend most of their wealth on necessary consumption (food, rent, getting to work).

2. Most of the goods taxes (electricity, heat, transportation) are inelastic. People may chose to purchase less consumer items, eat less meat, but they are still going to heat their homes and drive to work.

I'm not suggesting to do nothing, but a smug mentality of "people are just not willing to do the obviously right solution because they are stupid" doesn't solve anything either.

You are not wrong. It has been my position from the start that we should advocate for minimizing human impact on the climate and invest in surviving the change that those who will not heed that advice will create. I can recommend the book "Apocalypse Never" by Michael Shellenberger. While I don't agree with all of his points he does call out some of the factors that drive unnecessary hype. Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways is that there are monied interests who are just as invested in scare mongering to damage their opponent interests as there are environmental groups.

That aside, some of the early research in climate change actually pointed out that the result of this climate instability may in fact be another glacial period rather than a period of extremely high temperatures. Just as damaging to people and ecosystems but not what a lot of people think about when they think "climate change."

And finally, there are a models and there are a bunch of unknowns. As the unknowns reveal themselves the models get better, but some things like the "great oxygenation events" that are documented in the fossil record are really really unknown.

The current wildfires are a good example of an unknown. The drought combined with lightning is burning millions of acres of forest. It can do that year after year for perhaps a decade, maybe two, and then the properties that make the forest subject to massive fires are mooted. So what then? Does the American northwest turn into a giant savannah with sparse trees and lots of grassland? When the ice has melted and the moisture carrying capacity of the air has quintupled, The annual rainstorms/hurricanes/monsoons will be biblically huge every year. How will people respond, how will we change the way we build, the way we live, the way we survive? It involves change but the challenges of living on the earth in those conditions is a couple of orders of magnitude less than the challenge of living on a planet that has never supported life in the first place.

Every generation is dumb in their own way, and we may get knocked back into a feudal existence, but what we can do as individuals remains the same, set good examples, practice less impactful living, and try to leave our patch of world better than it would have been had we not been there.