How Would Just 2 Degrees of Warming Change the Planet?

[smirkymonkey]

http://www.livescience.com/58891-why-2-degrees-celsius-increase-matters.html?utm_source=notification


"The Earth is home to a range of climates, from the scorching dunes of the Sahara to the freezing ridges of Antarctica. Given this diversity, why are climate scientists so alarmed about a worldwide temperature increase of just 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius)?

Changing the average temperature of an entire planet, even if it's just by a few degrees, is a big deal, said Peter deMenocal, a paleoclimate scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York.

"A person living in any one location can experience huge changes in weather and even in climate, but those are often compensated by changes on opposite sides of the world," deMenocal told Live Science.

Right now, the world is about 2.1 degrees F (1.2 degrees C) warmer than it was during preindustrial times, deMenocal said. The 144 countries participating in the 2016 Paris Agreement announced that the world should limit the global increase in this century to 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C), a stricter limit than the former goal of a 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) increase." (more...)

[NickB79]

1. It will bring civilization to its knees

When the subsequent droughts, floods, heat waves and food shortages create a billion climate refugees, the countries lucky enough to not be as severely affected will have them streaming in for shelter.

Imagine Syria and Somalia, only an order of magnitude more severe.

[smirkymonkey]

2. Most people think it is just going to shrink shorelines a little.

They have no idea of the magnitude of what this means. Famine, disease, even wars. It is a complete disaster in the making.

[HoneyBadger]

3. Reverse climate change, do not allow it to increase at all

This is THE issue. No healthcare means some people die. Climate change means that every person on the planet dies.

[NickB79]

4. That would require massive carbon sequestration

In addition to a complete transition to carbon-neutral energy, globally.

No coal. No gas. No oil. AND burying billions of tons of carbon a year, for the better part of a century.

We are decades from a total renewable transition, and probably even further from that to sequester carbon on a scale we need to halt climate change.

And this assumes we haven't crossed the point of no return with regard to positive feedbacks like permafrost thaw and forest fires. What's scary is that, despite the fact that carbon emissions have been flat globally for 3 years, atmospheric CO2 levels are now rising FASTER than ever before!

This strongly implies our natural carbon sinks are already saturated, decades sooner than anticipated.

[HoneyBadger]

5. Easier to start now than after you have made the problem worse

Delaying the solution only creates a bigger problem for the future. Which is not nice.

[Calculating]

12. Unfortunately we just don't have the tech yet

What you propose would involve preventing the use of >75% of fossil fuels TODAY. How are people gonna get around without cars? How are we gonna keep the lights on without enough alternative energy infrastructure? It's simply impossible to move quickly on this issue. Any kind of plans need to be conducted over a 10-20 year timeframe in order to avoid damaging our economy and standard of living too heavily.

[HoneyBadger]

17. Require that those who have done injury make amends

If you are an industrialized nation and have been conspicuously consuming for decades, it is time to make amends. if that means significant reductions in ac, driving, refrigeration, etc, then that was the cost of unfettered consumption for so long.

[Calculating]

18. By asking too much you just make sure nothing gets done

Tell people you're gonna ban their cars and that they'll need to give up their ac/refrigeration/lights/etc and you just guarantee they won't vote for your ideas. We need to be realistic on this issue, and accept that change will come about slowly. We cannot remake our whole society in a few years.

[HoneyBadger]

19. By enabling, you just become a part of the problem

[7962]

37. Finally, someone recognizes REALITY.

And especially when other countries viewed as "behind' are still allowed to go about their merry way simply because they were late to the industrialization party

[HoneyBadger]

45. Is the concept of paying for what you used so unusual?

I think that most people understand it. Think of it as reparations.

[7962]

46. I do pay. Every time my bills come in.

And if you think calling it "reparations" will actually HELP the situation, the opposite will be the reality

[tritsofme]

20. How can such a solution be compatible with democracy?

What if voters...disagree with your plan to significantly reduce their standard of living, even if truly for a longer term greater good?

[HoneyBadger]

22. Do you recall casting a vote on emissions law, OSHA safety requirements, etc?

As citizens of a democracy, you and I do not vote on regulations.

[tritsofme]

23. OSHA safety regulations directly benefit regular people's everyday lives.

Which is why they are so popular.

If regulations are implemented that can be directly attributed to a marked decline in the average voter's standard of living, it would be foolish to think that the regulations would not become a political lightening rod that many voters would revolt against.

[Calculating]

25. You pass a law banning people from driving their cars and you'll have riots in a day

People simply aren't gonna be told they can't have certain things. It only works when banning things that are used by small minorities of the population(IE drug laws), and even then it works pretty badly. Trying to ban things used by 90% of the population is a recipe for disaster.

People like Emissions and OSHA stuff because it improves their health and lives. Try to ban their cars, or tell them they can't run their AC on a hot day and they'll be outside your house with pitchforks in no time.

[HoneyBadger]

33. People are not going to like the reversal whether it comes tomorrow or in a hundred years

Starting tomorrow keeps climate change from worsening. If you acknowledge the problem, are unwilling to fix it, but are happy to patch it and delay any real solution until the next generation, you are worse than the people that naively created the problem.

[tritsofme]

49. But again, in a democracy how can a government take actions that will harm citizens

in the short run, if there is not an overly broad political consensus for such dramatic action?

It's easy to sit in the peanut gallery, but there are no easy policy answers here.

[HoneyBadger]

50. You mean when California outlaws watering lawns, lawns which consume CO2 and convert it to O?

I.e. California opts to hasten climate change.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lawn-limits-20150715-story.html

[tritsofme]

51. Huh? A lawn has no impact on standard of living or quality of life

Though...my father in law may have disagreed....

You proposed: significant reductions in ac, driving, refrigeration

These are restrictions that voters would not tolerate, and could not just be imposed from above...in a democracy.

[LanternWaste]

53. Politics is imaginary. Science is not.

Manipulating and ignoring science to be compatible with the politics has been tried before. It's called Lysenkoism, and people starved to avoid a reduction in the standard of living.

You see, politics is imaginary. The effects of science are not.

[tritsofme]

55. So how do you suppose those solutions be implemented in the face of a hostile voting public?

Politics might be imaginary, but its consequences certainly are not.

The sort of dramatic action and curtailment of rights and privileges that would result in significant standard of living decline simply could not be carried out by a government that is accountable to voters.

If you all are advocating for a "dictatorship of scientists" or some other sort of authoritarian regime to implement these policies, let's be up front about it.

[Calculating]

10. Every person on the planet dies?

Isn't that a little overly dramatic? It will be bad, but being overly dramatic about the issue isn't productive. That just puts people in a "we're doomed so why bother" state of mind.

[HoneyBadger]

11. Literally every person on the planet dies if we do not reverse climate change

The planet will be uninhabitable by human life

[Calculating]

13. How do you arrive at that conclusion?

We might take the climate back to the time of the dinosaurs when the planet had no/little ice and sea levels were hundreds of feet higher, but I still don't see how all humans would die. Losing all coastal cities would suck, and hundreds of millions/billions might die, but not ALL humans. Places like Alaska and Siberia would simply become the new agricultural zones of the world.

[HoneyBadger]

14. A lack of resources, combined with mankind's inability to evolve, a climate which does not support

food production, will result in an irreversible situation (if it reverses itself 1000 years after humanity is extinct, it is too late) Climate change is how the world ends.

[former9thward]

24. Not a single scientist agrees with you.

Not one. What an anti-science post.

[HoneyBadger]

32. How about 4th graders?

Temp goes up 2 degrees every 100 years, how long before it goes up 20 degrees?

Lets say that we do better, temp goes up 1 degree every 200 years, how long before it goes up 20 degrees?

Temp stops going up at all, how long before it goes up 20 degrees?

Temp has already gone up 2 degrees, temp starts going down .1 degree every 100 years, how long before it gets back to where it should be?

Temp has gone up 2 degrees, temp goes up 1 more degree in the next hundred years, temp starts going down .1 degree every 100 years, how long before it gets back to where it should be?


4th graders know that waiting until the day that the hw is due to start doing it is more risky than starting when you first got the hw.

Scientists know this too.

[former9thward]

39. If you wish to cite 4th graders for your support, fine.

I would rather rely on actual scientists which you have not cited.

[HoneyBadger]

43. Here you go

https://theconversation.com/without-a-longer-term-view-the-paris-agreement-will-lock-in-warming-for-centuries-64169

The eventual equilibrium (long-term) level of warming is up to twice the transient (short-term) level of warming. In other words, the Paris Agreement’s response of 1.5-2℃ by 2100 will grow over subsequent centuries toward an equilibrium warming of 2.3-4℃, even without any further emissions.

http://time.com/4502561/donald-trump-stephen-hawking-climate-change/

The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/20/sunday-review/climate-change-hot-future.html?_r=0

By the end of the century, the number of 100-degree days will skyrocket, making working or playing outdoors unbearable, and sometimes deadly.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-game-over-global-warming-climate-sensitivity-seven-degrees-a7407881.html

Dr Doug Parr, the environmental campaign group’s chief scientist, said: “The worrying thing is the suggestion climate sensitivity is higher [than thought] is not incompatible with higher temperatures we have been seeing this year.

“If there is science backing that up, that there’s a higher sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases, that puts at risk the prospect of keeping the globe at the Paris target of well below 2C.

“Anybody who understands the situation we find ourselves in would have already have realised we are in an emergency situation.”

[former9thward]

52. I was responding to your comments about human extinction.

No scientist agrees with that.

[HoneyBadger]

56. Hawking does

Stephen Hawking thinks humanity has only 1,000 years left of survival on Earth and that our species needs to colonize other planets.

http://www.livescience.com/56926-stephen-hawking-humanity-extinct-1000-years.html

[Doodley]

26. Trump won't let Syrian refugees in. Imagine

half a billion refugees. Imagine famine on a scale never seen before. Imagine the a global depression. The need for hundreds of millions of people to move to other nations would spark a world war.

[7962]

38. And you know this how? You dont. +2 degrees isnt going to kill off humanity. Been there before.

We existed with temps +2 than we have now back in the Roman ages, looks like we survived then too.
"sky is falling" wont win anyone over, its more likely that more will scoff

[HoneyBadger]

40. Are you a denier?

What makes you think that the increase stops at 2 degrees? Answer is that it does not, it just keeps going, and because it is somewhat irreversible, it is becomes even more difficult to reverse. Giving up ac to save humanity IS worth doing.

[7962]

42. Tell that to someone in an area where summers have 100 degree days. Wont work.

Not a denier, just a realist. Look at what happened in Chicago just a few yrs ago, where AC isnt a given. Many people died from the heat. No one is going to give up their AC. Personally, I keep mine at 78, but i dont know anyone else who does, except my brother.
The OP uses 2 degrees as the benchmark, so thats why i went with that

[HoneyBadger]

44. So you would rather humanity become extinct than move

Got it

[7962]

47. And humanity isnt going to become extinct. Fear mongering does nothing.

Where are YOU going to move? What general area do you live NOW?

[HoneyBadger]

48. A few hours from a place that experienced record setting heat this weekend

And I left the ac off, did not drive, and drank room temperature (warm) water. Somehow I am still fine.

[HoneyBadger]

34. Ice has already melted

How are we supposed to restore it? If we cannot, then some effects of climate change are already difficult, if not impossible to reverse.

[KingCharlemagne]

7. 80% of the world's population -- some 5 billion people -- lives within 1 km of an oceanic

body of water. Just where the fuck are those people supposed to go when sea levels continue to rise?

[NickB79]

8. Look at how India is preparing for climate change

By building a massive fence along the Bangladeshi border, since most of Bangladesh is only a few feet above sea level. When the seas rise, they'll be trapped.

Not all nations will be willing to accept climate refugees.

[KingCharlemagne]

9. The very concept of "nation" may itself come into question, given the

enormity (and near-inevitability) of what is coming, i.e., mass human migration on a historically unprecedented scale.

[Ghost Dog]

29. Social structures will break down

and there will be much conflict at every scale.

Expect also widespread pandemic diseases

Some of the 'elites' will attempt a ' Noah's Ark' strategy, aiming to be among the few eventual survivors to emerge, they would hope, generations hence, with a body of scientific and artistic culture intact.

[GliderGuider]

16. Indeed it will. And as goes civilization, so goes (most of) humanity.

I first wrote the words "We're fucked" on the Internet in 2006.

In the eleven years since I wrote that fateful phrase humanity has:

• Added almost a billion people;
  
• Emitted 370 billion tonnes of CO2; and
  
• Extirpated 800,000 species.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't look much like "progress" to me. We're far more fucked now than we were a decade ago, if such a thing is possible.

Some people are inclined to blame our predicament on dysfunctional politics - which is usually defined to include various corporate overlords. The implicit belief is that if we could change our politics we might have a chance.

IMO politics of any sort can't fix this. There is no political constituency for degrowth, anywhere on the planet. Especially not for the scale of reduction in both population and economic activity that it would take to bring the world back into balance. That goes for any kind of government you can name, from monarchies, dictatorships and theocracies to all flavours of democracy.

While politics can shape social growth, it can't (and in general has no desire to) halt or reverse it. There has never been a political body in human history that has actively reversed the growth of the society it governed.

There have been two - just two - examples of deliberate steady-state societies in the last mumblety-thousand years: Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1853 (when it was effectively ended by the gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Matthew Perry) and the tiny Pacific island of Tikopia. Every other society that rose to power, crushing all aboriginal societies in the way of their expansion, has been based on the principle of "growth if possible."

There is a popular myth that the Chinese ideogram for "crisis" is the same as the one for "opportunity". Unfortunately, there is little or no opportunity in this crisis, just a lot of twisting, turning, posturing, bargaining and wishful thinking. It's an ever-tightening crisis with no resolution short of rupture.

By the time all the cards have been played, humanity will probably consist of no more than 10 million people, living in widely scattered bands in the remaining hospitable regions around the planet.

Paradoxically, there's some peace of mind to be found in coming to terms with that realization.

May all beings find peace.

[raccoon]

21. Interesting post, especially this:

There have been two - just two - examples of deliberate steady-state societies in the last mumblety-thousand years: Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1853 (when it was effectively ended by the gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Matthew Perry) and the tiny Pacific island of Tikopia. Every other society that rose to power, crushing all aboriginal societies in the way of their expansion, has been based on the principle of "growth if possible."

That's something I've wondered about.

[tblue37]

28. The Syrian civil war started as a result of Assad's brutal response to peaceful demonstrations

by those driven to the city by drought that destroyed their crops. They were begging for help, but instead were brutally suppressed. Multiply the fallout from the Syrian civil war by many times to imagine how climate change will bring civilization to its knees!

[roamer65]

6. Just wait until 500ppm.

It's gonna be ugly. Nearly everyone will see it and we won't be able to stop it.

[lunatica]

15. Scientists need to learn to talk like they're talking to children

Scientific jargon isn't understood by most people. Speaking in abstract terms is not very useful.

Whenever it gets colder or the snow storms are getting worse and the cement brained happily use it to prove that global warming is just scientists playing a hoax why can't they just do something like explain that a raise in temperature of just a few degrees means much more tonnage of water evaporates into th atmosphere. This means that when it comes down in the form of rain or snow there is a corresponding severity in the downfall. More water in the atmosphere means more rain and snowfall. More severe storms means bigger tornadoes, hurricanes and that means worse flooding, and basically all weather will be more severe.

I've explained it this way to quite a few people and every time it gets them thinking because it makes sense even to the most obtuse and they have to admit that weather has been getting worse where they live. They realize they're experiencing climate change first hand.

[Ghost Dog]

30. Yes, I also find this approach works.

Keep it clear, simple, easy to follow and impeccably logical.

[7962]

41. Yes, that why "global warming" was a dumb term to begin with; implying warming was the only issue

Yet i never hear anyone on TV state it as simply as you just did.

[smirkymonkey]

54. I agree. People need to understand how this will affect their daily lives and

how severely before they will get behind it on a greater scale. Right now, even if people believe in global warming, they still don't quite know what it could mean to them on a personal level and how much their way of life could change.

[Doodley]

27. Need to find a way to directly extract CO2 from the atmosphere.

[Ghost Dog]

31. Check out: Photochemical carbon dioxide reduction

Photochemical carbon dioxide reduction harnesses solar energy to convert CO2 into higher-energy products. The chemical conversion of CO2 already occurs on an industrial scale in the manufacture of solvents such as formic acid, but photochemical reduction differs in that it relies on a renewable energy source, the sun. Because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, there is environmental interest in producing artificial systems that are efficient photocatalysts, but the low turn-over rates of current methods have prohibited wide-scale industrial application.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photochemical_carbon_dioxide_reduction

And see more on Carbon Sequestration here, for starters:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration

[Doodley]

35. Thanks for that. I guess the problem is time. When ice in a drink is melting fast, you

don't stop it melting by moving into a slightly cooler room, you'd have to put it in the freezer. Not something we can do. It may be too late already.

[HoneyBadger]

36. Short of another brief Ice Age

You may be right. It tends harder to fix things that are broken vs keeping them from breaking.