IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

Invest on renewable energy, until it is several times larger than our consumption; invest on energy storage and renewable chemical inputs; invest on carbon capture.

There's no hidden trick, all of that is completely obvious. Yet, government action could increase the rate of change several times.

Nobody is in full speed, everywhere things are mostly left to the market, and the market created a huge lot of completely artificial bottlenecks. It also is unable to do research and any kind of long-term investments, even when it's clear those are profitable; and it's always completely unwilling to do infrastructure investment.

I'd argue we have no idea what will happen when the glaciers melt, given the lack of accurate climate change predictions to date. We have a lot of models that have historically proven very incomplete with no reason to believe they're any more complete now.

The oceans rising is more a problem, but it's not going to end human civilization and will happen slowly enough that adaptation is possible, albeit expensive. "Drowning" is hyperbole.

Uncertainty is just that, uncertainty. It will be positive for some areas and negative for others. Those of us who benefit from the status quo (myself included) can argue it would be unwise to mess up a good thing, but the simple fact is we have no idea. There will be winners as well as losers. It's quite possible that the midwest becomes wet enough that American farmers will become even more productive through double-cropping, for starters. Likewise the Russians look forward to their northern coastline thawing.

The sky isn't falling, it's shifting, and while we probably should minimize the shift as much as practical, we shouldn't plunge ourselves into an economic depression to do it.

Discontinuous effects, yes.

A stable climate functions more like a light switch than a dimmer switch. There is an "off", and once we go there getting back is really hard. It's almost like a one way switch.

As one example of a feedback loop, when polar ice melts, the area effectively turns from white (ice) to black (ocean). This area then absorbs more heat, driving more heating. So that's one feedback loop.

I think the feedback loops are kind of cool to study. Methane emissions in the tundra. Greenland melting causes more melting. Higher temps cause more water vapor that absorbs heat.

That doesn't give you specifics on where the line is. But wanted to give you an idea about the discontinuity, that there is a threshold vs dimmer switch.

P.S. I plugged your question into ChatGPT but the response was vague.

> we're probably going to have to see some dire consequences of climate change before any serious action is taken.

Is it your position that there have been no serious consequences of climate change to date? That's not factual.

> Page 16

> https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

>> Have they modeled all the different plausible crops and agricultural techniques, which regional environmental conditions they're most suited for, and the transitions between them based on regional climate change effects?

> Seems so.

I'm not seeing it. I'm assuming you mean page 16 of the "Summary for Policymakers," but all that has is a unreadable map of "Maize Yield" projections with the disclaimer:

> Projected regional impacts reflect biophysical responses to changing temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, humidity, wind, and CO2 enhancement of growth and water retention in currently cultivated areas. Models assume that irrigated areas are not water-limited. Models do not represent pests, diseases, future agro-technological changes and some extreme climate responses.

So it sounds like they are not accounting for things like changes between crops or changing which areas are cultivated, which could be pretty significant. For instance: their tiny map shows the cultivated area in Canada remaining unchanged, but if you're looking at total world agricultural yield of a future warmer planet, it seems like you would have account for more Canadian land becoming arable and agriculture spreading further north.

> "Extremely" is a big word. Agricultural yields depend on the weather. A population of 9-10 billion will not be sustained by vertical farms maintained in a synthetic climate.

Which is not the way I (or anyone reasonable) would think people would adapt. Instead of the software-engineer techno-fetishist fantasy of "vertical farms", I would think the adaptations would consist of things like:

1. Creating new farms in areas where the climate is currently too cold for productive agriculture,

2. Switching to different crops or different varieties that are hardier against heat and drought or otherwise yield more calories (per whatever limiting factor),

3. Switching to different irrigation techniques that may be more water-efficient,

4. etc.