The expected increase in temperature by 2100 is controversial; I think a rise of 5- or 6-degree (C) is a pessimistic bound. But that’s by 2100; the linked-to blog claims to expect such a rise by 2050, which IMO makes it worthless as a source.
However…
I see that others in the thread beat me to it but …
I’m afraid that it is you, ITR champion, who displays ignorance here. Have you actually read scientific discussions about climate change and temperature details?
There are several important mechanisms which may fail at a net rise of 5-degree (C) or less. Some experts think that rise is enough to cause the Amazon forest’s rain cycle to fail. I won’t insult you by asking if you know whether that would be a serious problem. I don’t know what the best non-pay cite for that claim is; Here’s a pdf on the topic. To give just one more example, a rise of even 3-degree has been suggested as sufficient to begin “irreversible melting of Greenland’s ice cover” – again a serious catastrophe if it happens.
Somewhat mysterious is that the Earth was much warmer millions of years ago than it is today, yet “everything turned out OK.” But discussion of that “mystery” deserves its own thread.
99 maybe. But 90? We’d be just fine, as civilization goes, especially if it was the “right” 90% who died off. The rest would get to breeding and we’d be back in the ballgame in no time.
Or governments could check out how the Netherlands manages with 20 percent of the land below sea level.
I’m not saying the US is rich enough to build dikes for 20 percent of our land mass. We aren’t. But our below sea level land is unlikely to reach that percent.
Another possibility is geoengineering. Today it sounds way too risky. But if the situation gets dire enough, the risks start looking better.
Personally, I use electrified rail transit, rarely fly, and generally try to hold down energy use. So does my wife. But at a society level, I see pretty limited benefit in what we are doing. Dramatically lower consumption would mean lower fuel prices, which means higher consumption. Eventually all the easily recoverable petroleum will be burnt anyway. Will dragging out the process, which is essentially the environmentalist plan, really help much? It seems to me that the benefits of trying to hold back emissions are much more uncertain than the benefits of building dikes.
Probably but not necessarily; we’ve never lived in the conditions that appear to be coming. And if civilization permanently falls (due to the climate no longer being stable enough for large scale agriculture for example) then it’s entirely possible we’ll eventually evolve away from intelligence and become just another animal.
We’d lose most of civilization with that kind of die off; even ignoring the inevitable chaos, we’d no longer have the population to support the plethora of specialists we do now. And “we’d just breed back” presumes that there’s enough food in that hypothetical future to support more people.
It also presumes the women would either lose access to birth control or want to have children. The former seems to me unlikely unless we were down to less than a million people – probably far less. And it’s complete speculation to think that women would want to have more than two children.
As for the OP “SCIENCE POPE,” his schtick is less like Benedict and more like old testament prophets predicting that various cities and countries would become ruins. What I get from his screed is – repent or die. One thing that grates on me a bit: Why is is only the government that has to repent. What about people who buy houses that aren’t walking distance from work, use airplanes, see the USA in their Prius, eats meat (takes much more prime cropland to feed a person), and buy organic produce (also takes more cropland, although not nearly as bad as beef). I’d like it better if he called on individuals to repent, although, as I wrote a few posts above in favoring seawalls, I also want government action.
Wow. Who are the right 90 percent? Africans or Europeans? The Israelis or the Palestinians? I’d say, and I’d hope almost everyone would say, their neither is remotely right.
If there really is a major world food crisis, for whatever reason (could be a volcano) where the problem isn’t distribution, but massive lack of food, it is the responsibility of the rich countries to – I believe it would be temporary – slaughter almost all the farm animals, and go vegetarian. This would result in a lot more food right away, and then roughly double food production. Politically, of course, convincing democratic peoples of the need would be a problem. The more sudden the crisis, the more likely, I think, that strong measures would be enacted.
Technology would collapse, but that’s not the same thing as civilization. Tools aren’t good or evil, but they’re just tools, don’t think for a minute they’re of the same order as the hand that wields them.
It would be ironic (and maybe as high as 50/50, after the initial shock wave from the dieoff) that we follow this rich tech / poor culture civ with a poor tech / rich culture civ.
Say what? We’ve a very rich culture. Low technology equates to an impoverished culture; they’ve neither the luxury nor the capacity for much beyond survival.
We have lots of stuff. Whether we are a “rich culture” is in the eyes of the beholder.
A rich culture isn’t an unalloyed good. It’s generally based on severe inequality and an un-self-conscious elititism. The forces that flatten out social inequity also tend to reduce everything to consumerist entertainment. That’s one of life’s paradoxes – there’s a law of conservation of quality: it can either be evenly distributed to reduce misery or concentrated to enrich culture for the very few at the top.
Presumably which you prefer depends on your seat at the table.
I don’t need to assume, many on the top decided that to have a workable society they have to then accept higher taxes and to deal with tragedies of the commons (like the case in point), so then societies can continue.
The problem comes when infotainemt like FOX appears into the picture to give a voice to the irresponsible elites that would profit from the commons tragedy that is the subject here.
I can answer that for you: NO! Absolutely not! If you believe in manmade climate change, you shouldn’t ever have children. Think of the carbon footprint those little rugrats have. Do it for the environment.
P.S. This thead is nucking futs. Why are you guys talking about losing 99 / 100 people and “after the dieoff”. It’s not like a tsunami is literally going to hit CA and wipe out DC and NYC overnight, killing everyone there. Even if the ocean rose 40 feet, most of us would not be affected (my sympathies to NOLA and the beachfront property owners), especially if it happens over a period of decades, giving those affected plenty of time to move out of its path or make adjustments a la the Netherlands.
That is “nice”, but most of the ones replying are critical of the OP (specifically the so called “Pope of science”), so take that “you guys” wide brush elsewhere.
The fallacy is to continue to assume that natural cycles that are still active are not masking the rise that is still there.
Bottom line, recent la nina years, that are colder in a cycle and are used by many misleading sources to claim that there is an inexplicable pause, are getting warmer, as well as the other years in a cycle.
So? That won’t save humanity from a mass dieoff if agriculture collapses, or if the worst-case scenario of continent-sized “hypercanes” pans out. And you are grossly underestimating the effects of a massive rise in sea level.
That’s nonsense. The entertainments of the self-described “elite” aren’t any more inherently sophisticated or noble than that of the common people; both the poor and the rich are as likely to enjoy garbage. It’s just that the poor can’t afford anything much better.
Bottom line, Pachuri still reports that the warming is there and it will get worse as the cycles are not getting lower in temperature from the rise in temperature caused by human CO2. If what you reported is not misleading, the following bit that still reports that human emissions need to be curbed to prevent cycles from getting warmer has to be reported also, it is exactly the same as the time back in the 70’s when popular media reported that there was a pause and an ice age could come.
Problem was that the media did not report properly who where the “climatological Cassandras” that reported that, and then researchers that looked at the past papers found out that in reality a super majority of papers predicted that warming was coming after that cycle in the 70’s would go away.
So most scientists were correct, what we have nowadays is more confirmation that what natural cycles are hiding do not give us a reason to be complacent.
If you can not explain properly why la nina years continue to get warmer (as it is all the warming from the last 3 or so cycles observed after the 70’s) then it is clear that just repeating this 17 year pause is only made by shady sources only to mislead people on what we need to do to control the current driver of the rise in temperature.
But discussion of that “mystery” deserves its own thread.