The next 30 years.

[paranoid marvin]

The Human condition is to continue on as normal, and then to try to mitigate the consequences of continuing on as normal.

The reason for doing so is usually... money.

 

[Swank]

This August comment seems even more insightful after the events of early Nov (especially the bit about grocery costs). In addition, somehow, millions of people were convinced that the biggest issue facing them is the possibility that their daughter might end up playing volleyball against a biological male (something that is unlikely, and wouldn't matter much even if it happened). Meanwhile, the planet gets ever hotter.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the issue facing them is whether the party invested in making sure their daughter is playing a biological male is actually taking care of business. Those optics did not help.

The world suffered global inflation, and the leadership of the country that weathered inflation best are the 'losers' that didn't make it go away entirely, reversing prices by four years. People have zero perspective or memory.


I just read Termination Shock. I was surprised to find out that rescuing ourselves from runaway temperature is actually cheap and easy - even though that leaves the pH problem. Be interesting to see who flinches first and dumps sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere first, and what it's like living with screwed up oceans but cool temperatures. It will probably be some "rogue nation" - like Iran, Brazil, South Africa or Vietnam that does it first, and then it will become a global game of "trying to balance those dangerous nations" as we all do the same thing.

 

[paranoid marvin]

It's a bit like being in a house with ten other people. The house catches fire, and there's no escape. And then everyone arguing with each other about whose job it is try to put it out. Some claim that the house isn't on fire, even tbough they are coughing from smoke inhalation.



I don't actually think that the most severe conseqiences of climate will significantly affect most adults in our lifetimes. Which is part of the problem. The action needed is urgent, but the consequences of inaction will only be felt by future generations. If we were told that the world would end next Tuesday if all the emissions didn't stop today, they would. Probably.

 

[Toby Frost]

Well, extrapolating from current trends, which is never a good idea, by 2055, big parts of Africa will start to become uninhabitable. Populations will try to move to cooler lands, creating serious refugee problems. Anti-refugee politicians will have it easy, and will have an instant scapegoat for anything, which will provide cover for the dismantling and looting of infrastructure such as healthcare and public utilities. Poor healthcare and online misinformation will lead to successive small pandemics and a general worsening of health. Most Western countries will become "managed democracies", ie kleptocracies run by oligarchs and their companies. Huge amounts of money will be diverted to whatever crackpot notion an oligarch comes up with, however absurd.

Social media will be increasingly used as a tool for stirring up hatred and mob violence against scapegoat groups. Extreme nationalism, eugenics and outright fascism will be accepted as normal views as the Overton Window moves towards the far right. Strong efforts will be made to return to "traditional values", including the removal of women from public life. The creative industries will be largely replaced by AI.

Unless, of course, someone does something about it, which I doubt.

 

[Toby Frost]

Accidental double post.

 

[Swank]

It's a bit like being in a house with ten other people. The house catches fire, and there's no escape. And then everyone arguing with each other about whose job it is try to put it out. Some claim that the house isn't on fire, even tbough they are coughing from smoke inhalation.



I don't actually think that the most severe conseqiences of climate will significantly affect most adults in our lifetimes. Which is part of the problem. The action needed is urgent, but the consequences of inaction will only be felt by future generations. If we were told that the world would end next Tuesday if all the emissions didn't stop today, they would. Probably.

"Most adults" everywhere, or "most adults" in the Western world? The equator is going to be too hot to live in soon enough.

 

[paranoid marvin]

"Most adults" everywhere, or "most adults" in the Western world? The equator is going to be too hot to live in soon enough.

Most adults in the places that will determine if and what is done to slow down the process.

In all honesty, if the equator is going to be unliveable at some point this century, I'm not sure that anything we do now could prevent that from happening.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

When you take momentum into account the polar regions have already melted they just haven't finished melting yet. Put an ice cube on a hot stove and turn the stove off, the ice cube still melts at an accelerated rate. Of course you need an old fashioned stove that isn't super insulated to do that trick. There are a lot of people facing severe challenges right now due to a changing climate, they just don't happen to live where "we" live. I'm enjoying warmer winters, little or no snow, and saving money. The nine inch rains are getting closer but so far no direct hit. Storms like that are more common now and can put your house or store normally located on dry land in the middle of a temporary lake.

Besides the equator, destructive storm surges are becoming more common making the coastal regions and island locations dicey. Then there all the settlements in the permafrost regions, they are sinking out of sight, its going to be mud city at best or nothing at worst until or if it ever dries out. Living right on a river used to enhance property values, now it doesn't look so good.

When severe weather is expected it would probably be a good idea to post pictures of well known local locations and what they will look like using computer generated images for the results of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 inches of rain. That way we could see what it could look like as words don't always clearly describe what we could be looking at.

When severe weather is forecast its not a good idea to go driving around in it like you could 10 years ago. In a car in a severe rainstorm your life expectancy temporarily drops to zero. An ordinary rain storm only needs to tap into the upper atmosphere for a moment and then all hell breaks loose with absolutely no warning.

We probably aren't going to change or can't change much of what is driving these situations but that doesn't mean we stay stuck in a rut. It will force better building designs, locations, and major innovations in how living areas are built. Better energy systems will be made to keep the lights on. Running out of stuff to sell to people is bad business. Alternatives, new materials, new ways of doing things will fill the vacuum. As far as driving in a bad rain storm, until submersible cars are common place, probably just better to stay off the road.

 

[Swank]

Most adults in the places that will determine if and what is done to slow down the process.

In all honesty, if the equator is going to be unliveable at some point this century, I'm not sure that anything we do now could prevent that from happening.

Yeah, we could drop global temperatures in months by putting sulphur dioxide in the upper atmosphere.

 

[KGeo777]

The media wags said the world would be destroyed by nuclear war by 2000---how many movies and tv shows and books claimed this?

Nuclear winter etc.
I recall in the 1980s they said the West was overpopulated. India and Africa were fine because they weren't industrialized.
Now they are--and suddenly the overpopulation argument is gone. Instead--it's about the need to migrate because of climate change (Global Warming was too specific a term to circulate).

There's a business for fearmongering whether or not there's any truth to claims of industrial pollution--if wind mills kill birds then how is that helping? I think in some ways it is just the modern form of augury and soothsaying.

"The heavens will destroy you unless you pay me thirty sisterces to kill this bird and expose the entrails to all."

"The heavens will destroy you unless you pay me thirty million euros to build this bird-killing wind machine and expose the entrails to all."


The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

[Swank]

The media wags said the world would be destroyed by nuclear war by 2000---how many movies and tv shows and books claimed this?

Nuclear winter etc.

And we came damn close on several occasions. Is it really worthwhile discounting near misses?

 

[paranoid marvin]

I agree that there are industries that thrive on bad news, moreso nowadays than ever before.

But there is no doubt that pumping massive amounts of chemicals into the atmosphere will have consequences - and likely unfavourable ones.

I don't think that most world leaders question the fact that the climate is changing; but who will actually do something about it is a different matter.

It's crazy to think that significant parts of our world could become uninhabitable - or at least hostile - to human life, and that we could have done something about it, but chose not to because of money.

We will be castigated - and rightly so - by future generations, because of what we have to allowed to happen to our world. They will have to deal with the consequences of our actions.

 

[paranoid marvin]

And we came damn close on several occasions. Is it really worthwhile discounting near misses?

Perhaps it was the publicised threat - 'The War Game', 'The Day After', 'When the Wind Blows' and 'Threads' - that helped persuade those in control of consequential use of such weapons.

The trap was set the day that the first weapon was used, and it will only take a small amount of pressure to spring it. Perhaps we need more, not less doom mongering in respect of these types of weapon.

 

[Swank]

Perhaps it was the publicised threat - 'The War Game', 'The Day After', 'When the Wind Blows' and 'Threads' - that helped persuade those in control of consequential use of such weapons.

The trap was set the day that the first weapon was used, and it will only take a small amount of pressure to spring it. Perhaps we need more, not less doom mongering in respect of these types of weapon.

It is difficult to separate anti-nuclear weapons from anti-nuclear energy - which we need.

The current reduced number of weapons far surpasses the ability of the environment to absorb, so I don't know what doom mongering of that type will accomplish. No one is currently looking for de-escalation.

 

[KGeo777]

And we came damn close on several occasions. Is it really worthwhile discounting near misses?

More precisely, various authoritarian wags say we came close.

 

[Swank]

More precisely, various authoritarian wags say we came close.

They are probably the same ones saying the earth is heating up and vaccinations prevent plagues.

 

[KGeo777]

They are probably the same ones saying the earth is heating up and vaccinations prevent plagues.

And duck and cover, and double masking.

 

[paranoid marvin]

In my lifetime, we'e heard reports of global cooling and global warming. We've been told of a hole in the ozone layer (there was a whole hoo-haa about the use of CFCs and exhaust emissions and sprays). Back in the 70s and especially 80s (Reagan/Thatcher years) it was pretty much a certainty that nuclear armageddon was a case of when and not if.

And here we all, having battled through swine flu, avian flu, Covid, AIDS and other virulent diseases. The human race always seems to (in the words of Mr Goldbum) find a way.

But it is becoming clear that things are changing. Things beyond the reach of human ingenuity and fortitude. We've lived in (relative) peace and harmony with our planet and its other inhabitants for several million years. But in the last half century, we have been wilfully and knowingly destroying them bit by bit.

There was a time that we could claim ignorance, but no longer. We know that what we are doing is harmful to the planet, to our fellow species and to ourselves. But we are continuing to do it because it is easier and cheaper than not doing it.

And now our planet is responding in kind, and we are reaping the whirlwind. There's no doubt that mankind will survive, and that we will find ways of mitigating the worst of the inevitable global changes that are to come. Perhaps once we are faced with the consequences of our actions, we will realign our values and priorities. Or perhaps not.

But the truly sad part of all of this is that it never needed to be that way. Small changes that would have had relatively little impact on people would have made all the difference. But at the end of the day it is not all about money or power (although those two things play a significant role). It's mostly the human condition of being unable to work together as a species for the greater good of our planet, or even the mutual benefit of each other.

 

[Toby Frost]

The trouble is that someone with a very long view and a rather callous outlook could say that mankind "found a way" to defeat Hitler. Unfortunately, it took vast amounts of pointless death and destruction before things were righted (if that's the word), and fascism itself is still alive and well.

Personally, I think mankind has a sort of built-in curse: a very small quantity of people are sadistic, power-hungry psychopaths who simply can't care about anyone else, let alone the planet, and whose mentality is so different to normal that they might as well be a different species. Unfortunately, these people are hugely attractive to a much larger chunk of the population (I suspect between a quarter and a third), who will always follow the person who promises them revenge. It doesn't much matter who the revenge is aimed at or whether it has any justification. The point is that it feels good.

There's an old Onion joke story where two politicians have a debate. One gives sensible, reasoned opinions. The other promises to "kill the bastards". You can guess who wins.

 

[Swank]

The trouble is that someone with a very long view and a rather callous outlook could say that mankind "found a way" to defeat Hitler. Unfortunately, it took vast amounts of pointless death and destruction before things were righted (if that's the word), and fascism itself is still alive and well.

Personally, I think mankind has a sort of built-in curse: a very small quantity of people are sadistic, power-hungry psychopaths who simply can't care about anyone else, let alone the planet, and whose mentality is so different to normal that they might as well be a different species. Unfortunately, these people are hugely attractive to a much larger chunk of the population (I suspect between a quarter and a third), who will always follow the person who promises them revenge. It doesn't much matter who the revenge is aimed at or whether it has any justification. The point is that it feels good.

There's an old Onion joke story where two politicians have a debate. One gives sensible, reasoned opinions. The other promises to "kill the bastards". You can guess who wins.

I think we have just built a system that is too complex for all but a very few to wrap their heads around, so people deal with what seems to be more immediate.

When people in Texas die in the hundred thousands because the power grid fails and no one can take the temps, then it will be their immediate problem.