Turn Num Lock on. With it on, that shortcut shouldn’t activate. I just tested this for myself.
Oh, and some say the report is actually conservative in its estimates: What's Not in the Latest Terrifying IPCC Report? The "Much, Much, Much More Terrifying" New Research on Climate Tipping Points
I think I’m going to tell my nephews not to start families and not to go to college. I need them to know how to use rifles so they can protect me…
N/m; I think this deserves its own thread. Taking to IMHO.
I remember Al Gore swearing up and down that we only had ten years left before the earth would be uninhabitable - and that was twenty years ago. Twenty years before Al Gore, all the top scientists were predicting an imminent ice age, and we can see how that turned out.
I’m not too worried this time, either.
The “bullshit phase” of this is way behind us. Try to keep up.
Not sure how to parse your second sentence, but I was commenting on the seeming general agreement that if the United States government doesn’t get on board, then nothing will be done. If that’s so, then yes, the voting populace of this country has the exclusive power over the fate of human civilization. Where does my logic break down?
Your memory is faulty.
Among other faculties.
Stranger
Wrong. The Western industrialized countries will survive–they can afford air conditioning–but with a lower standard of living (higher food and energy costs, more extreme weather, migration away from the coasts…). But the human body without air conditioning has limits to how much heat it can withstand so there will be a massive death toll in the Tropics and the poor there will have problems paying for food so more starvation…
Although peak temperature levels in the tropics and subtropics, and generally more extreme weather conditions in the summer and winter certainly contribute to both mortality and lower productivity, the bigger issue with climate change is that approximately 40% of the Earth’s population lives within 100 km of coastal areas, and much of it in low- elevation coastal zone (less than 10 m above current mean sea level) which are sensitive to both the impact of general sea level rise and increased incidence of flooding from storm surges and tropical storms. In addition, more extreme weather and overly warm and unpredictably early growing seasons will actually impact crop viability creating food stress unless seasonal variations can be predicted and measures taken to optimize crop yields, and more frequent flooding can damage irrigation systems. The biggest near term impact is food stress, which can lead to political instability, armed conflict, and competition for scarce food and energy resources.
Stranger
So what are we looking at?
Hundreds of Trillions in property damage and lost economic growth? Millions dead? Millions displaced?
This is exactly right. It’s less a question of tropical residents being affected by uncomfortably hot temperatures than a question of hot global temperatures destabilizing the global climate circulation systems. People in tropical regions, particularly Africa, but also Central and South America, are particularly vulnerable to water resource stresses and food shortages from mass crop failures as a result of massive systemic circulation changes. But the compounding factor is that poverty greatly restrains their ability to respond to the challenges. It’s not unreasonable to expect desperate mass northward migration driven by starvation.
The science is reasonably confident as to general global impacts at any given CO2 stabilization level. The biggest uncertainty is what CO2 stabilization level we will achieve – and that’s a political question, not a scientific one.
But where can I find that info? I don’t know if we will get a 2C temperature raise, or if positive feedback will result in a 7-8C temperature raise.
You can find that information right in the report that this thread is about, and which I linked, because that’s basically what it’s about, specifically with respect to the impacts of a 1.5°C temperature rise – summarized in Figure SPM.2 in the Summary for Policymakers. Also, in the entirely of the IPCC Working Group 2 assessment report.
The amount by which temperature will rise for any given CO2 increase is called climate sensitivity, and the most important metric is equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) defined as the rise in equilibrium average global temperature for every doubling of CO2. The exact value of ECS has not been definitively established and indeed it probably changes with different conditions, but it’s virtually certain that it’s between the range 1.5 and 4.5°C, with recent studies suggesting a higher probability that it’s toward the lower end of that. It used to be estimated to have a most probable value of about 3, and now it seems more likely to be around 2°C.
It seems pretty much inevitable that CO2 will at least double from pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, so that means a minimum 2°C global temperature rise is probably inevitable, and it may be higher. In the short to medium term (by end of century) that would be the guideline I’d use in looking at impact assessments. I don’t think we’re going to hit 7 or 8°C temperature rise in any reasonably foreseeable future unless we’re totally reckless, and I’m optimistic that we won’t be. If we do, however, it would be utterly catastrophic and would impact all life on earth. Two things we should keep in mind: there is more than enough fossil fuel buried in the earth to reach that level, especially coal, and secondly, if we elevate temperatures to the point that we lose the majority of the polar ice caps, then climate sensitivity becomes greatly amplified and we face runaway climate change.
I don’t. And I actually did watch the movie.
Here is an argument that this report strongly understates the risk:
I thank you! °°°°°°°°°° — And my degrees thank you. (This and the occasional Ctrl-Alt-Del are the only reasons I ever use that past of the keyboard.)
Did you know transcripts of that Documentary can be found on-line? You don’t need special Google-fu: type “transcript Al Gore documentary” if you can’t remember how to spell “Inconvenient.” Google Chrome has a search facility that will show you every instance of “ten” or “10.” There aren’t many and only one is even remotely plausible as a fit:
Hmmm. No; unless you think the Earth was uninhabitable during Europe’s Little Ice Age, that’s not it either.
My guess?
The Mandela Effect. Or, more likely, you never watched the Al Gore documentary at all but remember sound-bites about it from Sean Hannity or his ilk.