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World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

cnbc.com

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Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#31

Post by gitfan86 »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

Why can't humanity survive an increase in 10 degrees? I understand polar bears or other animals that need specific levels of Ice or vegetation in specific areas, but humans are an extremely adaptive species.

Edit: I'm getting a lot of responses. It seems like there is a general misunderstanding of what happened during the previous ice age. Humans existed during the previous ice age and humanity survived a major increase in temperature. Obviously any tribe or culture that needed to be able to walk across the bearing straight didn't survive, but humanity did. And without any modern technology.

I get that an unknown future is scary, but just giving into the gloom and doom isn't productive. We need to increase out technologies for many reasons, not just climate change and we can survive and thrive, even if the world will be different that doesn't mean it will be terrible.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#32

Post by gmuslera »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

Dealing with very complex and large systems is hard, probably harder than our knowledge will be capable of this century, even if we keep accelerating.

That is the world system, climate, life, cycles, feedback loops, and many other things that we probably are not aware yet (just check the number of recent discoveries to have a hint) as a very complex and interrelated system. Trying to have an "engineering" there and not just messing with it to see what happens is beyond our capabilities. And our side of messing with it so far has not been preservation or austerity or whatever, just is making profits, and avoid putting a finger on that.

Then you have the human system, that is also complex, interrelated and fragile in ways that the many big powers that mess with it doesn't understand. That is not something that you can control in a directed way neither.

So you have an accelerating car, a cliff, and a lot of inertia you are not trying to register, and a lot of fragile things inside packed in unsafe ways. No matter the damage that does to start to stop right now, it won't be anything similar to what it will cause to crash, or to try to manoeuvre desperately when you are close enough. With all the consequences on a very complex system that something as dramatic will cause (that, as complex is it, can't be put a safe upper bound)

But somewhat you suggest that we keep accelerating that surely that cliff can be jumped over because we will be so fast that we will be flying, or it is not so deep and we will keep going safely on the other side. Is a nice bet for a basically suicidal individual, but not for a civilization with a lot of people that want to have a meaning for their life.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#33

Post by defrost »

swader999 wrote: post #2

So tell me how they actually measured global mean temp back in 1850?

With instrumentation across the globe at naval timekeeping stations of the various European empires - much of which persisted for a hundred years and thus overlapped with later instruments and broader coverage which allowed for levelling and blending.

It's essentially a "construct your baseline" problem faced in many domains, the Fifth and other IPCC reports:

    This IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C uses the reference period 1850–1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature.

    This is the earliest period with near-global observations and is the reference period used as an approximation of preindustrial temperatures in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

 ~ IPCC FAQ: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/SR15_FAQ_Low_Res.pdf
and naturally there are many papers that consider alternate baselines, data quality, proxies, etc. eg:

Estimating Changes in Global Temperature since the Preindustrial Period (2017)

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/98/9/bams-d-...

^^ Discussed in brief: https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2017/defining-pre-industr...

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#34

Post by blueflow »

gitfan86 wrote: post #31
atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

Why can't humanity survive an increase in 10 degrees? I understand polar bears or other animals that need specific levels of Ice or vegetation in specific areas, but humans are an extremely adaptive species. Edit: I'm getting a lot of responses. It seems like there is a general misunderstanding of what happened during the previous ice age. Humans existed during the previous ice age and humanity survived a major incre…

If humans can survive in Australia, Humanity surely will survive the climate change.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#35

Post by gorjusborg »

timeon wrote: post #25
atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

New technologies have not helped yet. Just covered part of increased demand. So it doesn't seem like technology is going to save us. It is all just distraction. Only way is one that will never happen: de-growth.

I agree, except I am pretty sure de-growth will happen, it just will not be under voluntary or controlled conditions.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#36

Post by chefkoch »

wongarsu wrote: post #9

> The findings do not represent a break of the landmark Paris Agreement, which aims to “limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels” over the long term. It seems safe to say we are now locked in to a path that will break the Paris Agreement, unless "long term" includes space sunshades, scattering reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, or other simi…

I guess at some point we will start geoengineering which will either work or kill a lot of people.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#37

Post by boxed »

wongarsu wrote: post #9

> The findings do not represent a break of the landmark Paris Agreement, which aims to “limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels” over the long term. It seems safe to say we are now locked in to a path that will break the Paris Agreement, unless "long term" includes space sunshades, scattering reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, or other simi…

I don't like the word "drastic" here. It's very much less drastic than what we are already doing. In fact, it's much less drastic.

I like to say: There is no longer a choice of playing God or not, only a choice of playing a competent or incompetent God.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#38

Post by _Algernon_ »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

This won't work simply due to induced demand.

We spend something like 2000x less energy per unit of light now than we did burning whale fat in the 1800s and all the energy saved energy simply goes into producing more light.

Hoping for technology to solve this mess is the same as hoping that adding an additional lane to a congested highway will solve traffic. It won't.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#39

Post by boxed »

chefkoch wrote: post #36
wongarsu wrote: post #9

> The findings do not represent a break of the landmark Paris Agreement, which aims to “limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels” over the long term. It seems safe to say we are now locked in to a path that will break the Paris Agreement, unless "long term" includes space sunshades, scattering reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, or other simi…

I guess at some point we will start geoengineering which will either work or kill a lot of people.

We already do massive geoengineering. That's what all that CO2 is doing! We're just doing it incompetently.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#40

Post by OwseiWT »

gitfan86 wrote: post #31
atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

Why can't humanity survive an increase in 10 degrees? I understand polar bears or other animals that need specific levels of Ice or vegetation in specific areas, but humans are an extremely adaptive species. Edit: I'm getting a lot of responses. It seems like there is a general misunderstanding of what happened during the previous ice age. Humans existed during the previous ice age and humanity survived a major incre…

floods, droughts and that kind of stuff. I'll will not die on a 40c heat, but some may, and the consequences on other systems will also affect me.

The panama canal, the lake more specifically, is drying up because of this stuff. And ~40% of US cargo ships use it.

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