Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040

Well, good thing many low IQ Republicans, who have full control, think AGW is "fake news".

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html

A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.

The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, inundating coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty. Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe effects of climate change.

Pft, that's for my kids to worry about.

Drill, baby, drill!

1) Global warming is a hoax.

2) Why should we do anything when China isn't?

3) Renewable energy is bad, something something, subsidies, something something, can't compete, something blah blah.

4) Think about the miners!

Not sure which one I'm going to use today....OK. Let's do #4. We can't afford to sacrifice the 10k jobs in a rural county in WV for a partial market in the energy sector!

I'm pretty sure I am going to see the relocation of millions of people from New Orleans, Florida, and other gulf coastal areas in my lifetime.

haha I hate that attitude. "Oh that's like a generation from now, why worry?" or "The earth will fix itself, this isn't the first time this has happened". Can't see ahead at all.

Shit I was having a conversation with someone the other day and they're like "Oh such and such will take about 80 years to happen" and my response was "Nice, not too long at all" and the person looked at me like I was crazy. I mean, yeah, we will be long gone, but 80 years is not that long in the big- or even medium-picture.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx

This might be part of the problem.

It is simply not that high of a concern for the general public. Now, the President/leadership in Congress speaking urgently about the problem would have an effect but he/they isn't/aren't interested in the topic.

I accepted a long time ago that not going over the 2C target was a goal highly unlikely to be achieved.

I'm going to expect thousands if not hundreds dying from famines and droughts. Medical prices might rise. Housing prices might rise due to displaced people. It is going to be an economic crisis around the world again.

We are so screwed. Could have done a much better job of mitigating it too, oh well.

Coal will save us.

Things are slowly changing (the move to renewable energy), but it's too slow. The fossil fuel industry is putting up one hell of a fight, and are using their friends in the media & government to spread misinformation to slow down the change.

The perfect example is here in Australia. We are one of the biggest exporters of coal in the world, so that industry is putting up one hell of a fight and have our current government's balls in a vice. So much so that our Prime Minister, who was one of the few members of the ruling conservative party here who wanted to act on climate change, was voted out by the party because of it and has left politics. Nevertheless, the renewable industry is growing here very quickly and a sizeable chunk of our power generation now comes from renewables (mainly due to private investment).

We need to keep pressure on our politicians and also act individually to reduce our carbon footprint where we can.

https://www.vox.com/2018/10/5/17934174/climate-change-global-warming-un-ipcc-report-1-5-degrees

sun, cycles, planet doesn't need saving, better for trees, too expensive, overpaid scientists, 1970s global cooling, little ice age, etc....

It's a cycle!, what cycle you ask? JUST A CYCLE!!!!!!!! Maybe even a motorcycle!

Regardless of what people think of it, climate change is a big issue, and last time I checked, even a decent chunk of "low IQ republicans" were in favor of doing something about it.

As someone with a pretty low heat tolerance, climate change concerns me in more ways than most.

Ethics/moral/religious/family Decline: 4
Environment/Pollution: 3

Oh ffs.

This week's end of the world crisis is brought to you by the DEMOCRATS.

LOL yup

Democrats are running around screaming "the world is ending" so perhaps we should give them a sign and put them under a freeway.

Exactly. And hey with a warmer climate, I don't have shovel tons of white shit every effing winter.

Yup, also just think about all the natural resources Norway can get from the permafrost being gone. and all the ship traffic.

And a potential war with Russia over resources up there. Honestly this is looking better day by day.

The Case for Climate Pessimism

An excerpt:

But very few people, scientists least of all, see these things happening by 2030. “Given the present political debate, I don’t see much chance of these near-term cuts happening, even in places that take climate very seriously,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at at Texas A&M University. Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann agreed. “As I’ve stated before, 1.5 degrees Celsius is probably not realistically on the table,” he said. “We’re better focusing on achievable targets.”

Some might caution against these statements. Because when scientists and pundits say that 1.5 degrees Celsius is off the table, they tell the public that humanity will fail to save the coral reefs, the fisheries, and millions of people in developing countries, no matter what they do. They take away hope—and without hope, the public will resign themselves to doing nothing.

Not if nuclear fusion can save us.

Stop complaining and start learning science.

Climate change is really a you problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/kigali-amendment-little-noticed-treaty-could-help-delay-climate-catastrophe?CMP=share_btn_tw

We may have forgotten that there are other, far more dangerous greenhouse gasses that we still dump into the atmosphere that are tens of thousands of times more potent at warming the planet than CO2, and this ban on those gases might end up saving our pathetic asses, provided the world doesn't take this amendment to the Montreal Protocol for granted.

ROFL

I think what we've done in the last 50 years regarding climate change gives us an idea of what we're going to do in the next 50 years. That is to say, the bare minimum.

I admit there's part of me that's interested to see how bad it's going to get in my lifetime. We're definitely headed toward a sort of cyberpunk dystopia.

Maybe not much focus in US, but in Norway there is some attention to other gasses as well. Methane that can be released when the permafrost in Sibir begins to thaw is one. It's about 30 times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 if I remember correctly.

Yeah, agriculture right now is the biggest source of methane. But we still pour HFCs into the air which have upwards of 11,000 times the greenhouse potency of CO2, and that stuff has to be dealt with just as urgently.

I am okay with this. Most of the planet will die off. The strong will survive.

This is not the end of the human race. It’s just going to suck for the next generation of people.

It’s population control.

Once humans start dying off, the demand for pollution will die off and eventually the earth will heal itself.

Don’t fear global warming. Embrace it.

how many decades did it take for the tobacco industry to admit their products were hazardous despite overwhelming scientific evidence? don't expect much change from interests whose bottom line is threatened by science. they know how to sow doubt and have PLENTY of folks lined to take their money to help with the effort.

At this point I stopped caring tbh. I'm nearing my 40s and don't plan on having children. Not that I truly don't care but I just gave up on a positive outcome.

HFC gasses are still far better than the ones they have replaced. We didn't have nearly as much knowledge about global warming back in the 80's when KFC gasses was outlawed as we do today.

Around Great Lakes should be good for a long long time (per every scientific per reviewed journal and article I've read), so I'll continue to live here and buy up property. It pays today and it will pay exponentially tomorrow.

https://newatlas.com/climeworks-carbon-capture-startup-climate/56743/

https://www.gasworld.com/a-technology-to-reverse-climate-change/2015576.article

Interesting technology.

Go back even further and we actually had people vying to keep lead in gasoline. At time we even knew lead poisoned people and caused brain damage.

Just wait I thought it was an ice age in the 70s? No no, global warming in the early 2000s? No wait major global disaster by 2020? Oh now its 2040, ok this one I fully believe!!!

Nope. https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm

1970s ice age predictions were predominantly media based. The majority of peer reviewed research at the time predicted warming due to increasing CO2.

Less Breitbart, more peer reviewed.

Nope. There has objectively been warming of the planet into and past the early 2000s. https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

Every part of the Earth's climate system has continued warming since 1998, with 2015 shattering temperature records.

There's a reason why 97% of climate scientists and all major organizations studying this disagree with you. The facts are there.

Nope. Most studies and models ended up a varying degree of accurate though.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming

https://www.ajc.com/weather/worst-global-warming-predictions-likely-the-most-accurate-study-finds/8XgpSxgLGHTZ7ctdgIJ7fJ/

Can you link me to the particular one you are discussing?

You should since they've been right so far, for the most part. Even if they are off by a few years, what we've already objectively observed is still bad news.

You don't actually think Climate Change and AGW are fake do you?