What is the worst single consequence of global warming?

Great Debates
21

Who was around to name it?

Here’s the biggest problem with global warming; we don’t know what will happen. Ocean levels could rise. But maybe not; maybe the cool- dry Earth outcome will happen, collapsing food production. Maybe warm places will become cold, cold places warm, and a billion people will have to move, causing unrest and war. Maybe the oceans will see mass death. Maybe deserts will grow, or maybe forests will expand. The problem is that it will happen much more quickly than such things usually take, which will upend the order of things dramatically, and that’s never good.

22

Yeah, the OP is asking for worse consequences. The Sci-Show guys had a good explanation about those worst case scenarios:

One very nasty possible outcome mentioned there: a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation. Besides the climate chaos, almost all animals in the oceans would die (except those that live on the surface). This is based on previous mass extinctions when the chemistry of the oceans was changed at a rapid pace, and the shutdown makes things worse. And eventually the entire planet ends up smelling like rotten eggs. Of course Hydrogen Sulfide (the reason for the smell) is also poisonous so eventually land critters will not make it too.

Again, those are worse case scenarios if noting or very little is done. And to get the full results of a shutdown we have centuries to go AFAIK, but before that some effects would be noticeable and I expect a lot of geoengineering efforts to be considered. Of course who pays for that or gets the blame for not doing the right thing early is to be seen.

So, yeah Quartz, the earth will make it, we however would be f***ed.

23

What do you consider to be the greatest good?

If the greatest good is status quo for the current non-human ecosystem, then the worst single consequence is probably the inability to adapt to a too-rapid rise in temperature. Consequences pretty much boil down to species disruption.

If your greatest good is status quo for humans, then the worst single realistic consequence is probably an inability to feed the world if agriculture is disrupted more rapidly than arable land is replaced and science becomes unable to keep up with food supply. Starvation returns to dependent nations.

On average we tend to over-worry and underestimate human resourcefulness, so I think the most dire predictions are unlikely. But it does seem like it would be a good thing for the earth (ecologically speaking) if the incredibly invasive human species got knocked back a bit by Something. We trash and consume the planet in a zillion ways more immediately harmful than global warming.

24

However, I think what this thread is about is negative consequences of global warming from the perspective of the well-being of humans.

Sure, it could be argued that having the human species “knocked back a bit” by sharp population decline as a consequence of resource loss, extreme weather, conflicts over dwindling resources, etc., would actually be a net positive for many other species on the earth. But you really can’t expect human beings themselves to evaluate possible outcomes from such an altruistic standpoint. In general, when we speak of “worst consequences”, we mean consequences that are worst for us.

25

I agree with you on that. Global warming is a bit of a red herring. It may even have some benefits. The real problem is human overpopulation but even that idea has problems because it is still framed in self-serving terms. People can change the climate at least a little and even wipe out whole ecosystems but we can’t harm the Earth as a whole. It will carry on just fine even if every man, woman and child are wiped out today.

The real question in human terms is about is about livability and sustainability. That doesn’t mean some pseudo-hippies in the U.S. buy a Prius instead of a pickup truck. That is just pissing in the ocean. The real problem is that we have over 7 billion people trending to 9 billion very quickly and the majority of those are in the rapidly developing 3rd world. There simply aren’t enough natural resources to give everyone a modern, western lifestyle. The population of Africa is predicted to explode over the next 50 years. That was the land where mass starvation was common during my teenage years not that long ago. Why would anyone think that is a positive thing?

The only realistic environmental remediation policy is population control and there is no will or way to do that on a global scale. That just means that we just have to accept it and live with the results. Enjoy the ride. You can’t fix global warming, species extinction or anything else when you have several billion new people that want just a fraction of the lifestyle a typical American or European enjoys now.

26

Yep, as mentioned earth will be fine, but we are f***. But generally speaking the argument here boils down to a colossal “we can’t walk and chew gum and the same time” kind of argument.

What history and economics is showing is that family planning, AKA as population control, does happen when we do deal with the issue of poverty. And the sad reality right now is that a lot of the people like the Chief are depending on fake sources of information that willfully omit that many of the ones that do talk about this issue do point out also about the need to control the population.

http://vault.sierraclub.org/population/

I have pointed many times in the past to this article that shows how fake news people like Anthony Watts are also playing with more anti science cards than just the one about not doing anything about global warming. Those sources resort to fear and ignorance when proponents of dealing also with with the population issue are disparaged.

So the whole argument of “just look at the population issue” is the red herring actually. It also ignores how climate change is happening thanks to our human technology and the problem is bound to be solved by being smart about how developing nations should develop too.

The lesson here is on looking at the many megatons of materials could had been needed if we had insisted that developed nations developed just like we did in the past. Just by looking at all the wiring that was not needed there does translate to billions of tons of fossil fuels not burned into the atmosphere thanks to the extraction, production and deployment of all that metal and plastic that an old fashion wired network needs.

27

Sure, if you don’t mind losing most coastal cities to sea level rise.

You can use that to vary the rise in meters.

“Sea levels have risen almost 3 inches globally in the most recent 20 years and rise on an average of 1/8 inch each year.”

“The current best estimates predict that sea level will rise up to 6.6 feet, or 2 meters, by the year 2100. Until recent years, this figure was viewed as pessimistic, with a rise of 3 feet considered more likely. Recent studies raise the concern that the 6.6-foot estimate is actually the more probable one with “business as usual” carbon emissions.”

So go to that link, set to 2m and then drill down to see coastal land losses. I really really hope you don’t live in the Netherlands, New Orleans, Miami, or near the Wash in England.

28

Comments like this conflate quantity with quality. Yes, humans would be demoralized if their numbers were so small that they were on the verge of extinction, but a billion humans would be enough, no? Many people limit themselves to two or three children deliberately — would they be happier and healthier with 27 children instead of just three?

To walk from our house to the nearest neighbor, we pass several species of bird, a squirrel or two, butterflies, frogs, etc. Would we be more blessed if all those creatures suddenly changed to humans?

Apex predators like Lions, the Kings of the Jungle, are few in number. Is the name “King” then a misnomer?

There are already more human individuals on the planet than any other mammalian species. 3rd-, 4th-, 5th-, 6th-, 7th- and 8th-place are held by animals raised as food or pets for human. (2nd place may be held by our good symbiote friend Rattus norvegicus.) Is the title “3rd most content and successful mammalian species” then to be shared by the domestic pig and domestic cattle?

And what about bacteria? Populations of species in Bacillus, Micrococcus, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus are not measured in billions or even quadrillions — in fact the populations of some bacterial species are estimated to be octillions. The total mass of some bacterial types exceeds total human biomass — is this what humanity is racing to achieve? More biomass than bacteria??

… And one often hears that we need billions or trillions of humans to maximize the number of geniuses. Yet Leonardo da Vinci and Johann Sebastian Bach were born when the population was less than a billion; Archimedes lived when the population was a fraction of that.

TL;DR: The meme that if a billion-human population is good then nine billion is nine times better is nonsense. Just say No.

29

:dubious: You’ve been saying that for at least the last decade, and it’s still wishful thinking:

It’s not true now, and it’s unlikely that it ever will be true, that there is no feasible way for humans to achieve some helpful amount of mitigation of climate change. It’s true that some significant amount of climate change is now inevitable due to past actions and inaction. But you are never going to get your wish for informed scientists and policymakers to reassure you that it’s now okay just to sit on your ass and ignore the problem, because there’s literally nothing that will do any good.

Do you have kids? Grandkids? Have you ever told them that you’ve spent the past decade just hoping and wishing for a valid excuse to ignore climate change with a clear conscience, rather than actually supporting policies to mitigate it?

30

Holland has a great sea wall spanning thousands of kilometers, with plans to spend a billion euros per year enhancing it to withstand at least a meter increase in ocean level.

Is there any prospect of doing something similar to protect threatened cities like Bangkok?

Changing coastlines may be unimportant in the long term but evacuations of hundreds of millions of city dwellers will be disruptive in the short term.

31

This is where I get so confused about the basic AGW message. Is it an ecological appeal for humans not to crap up the earth, or is it a narcissistic appeal for humans not to crap up their personal take-over of the earth?

There is NOTHING worse for the earth’s natural ecology than for humans to survive and prosper (excepting a real disaster like the Big Comet or something). The absolute worst thing we can do if AGW will negatively affect humans, is to ameliorate it. OTOH, if we ameliorate AGW to where its impact is minimal on humans, the impact of humans on the earth will FAR outweigh the effect of a rise in temperature. Without humans interfering, the earth’s ecosystem can adjust (and has adjusted in the past) to pretty much any catastrophic event. New ecologic niches, evolution, and all that.

So if the OP is talking about the single worst consequence of AGW wrt humans, the answer is: fewer humans, and those who remain suffer more. Tragic, because we love ourselves the most. :slight_smile:

If the OP is talking about the single worst consequence of AGW wrt the earth, the answer is: if it knocks back our species, it’s a huge benefit for other species because they will suffer less.

32

Far be it from me to doubt this hypothesis but I feel compelled to point out that this is basically the idea that the Earth will begin to fart uncontrollably and we humans will suffocate in the resulting Dutch Oven.

33

The worst consequence might be the damage this has caused to the green movement. The movement used to spend time and energy attacking pollutants that caused more outrage. Unfortunately this often meant attacking nuclear power and healthy GMOs, but it also attacked acid rain, air pollution, water pollution, etc. Nobody wants to breathe in deadly gas, so it was relatively easy to get people to support them.

And then came the focus on climate change. I believe it’s real, but I know it does not cause much outrage, and that it’s hard to believe in. Much of the damage is “invisible” if you don’t live in the Arctic (an area with a small population), and a 2 degree average temperature increase, when the temperature in most cities varies by more than 2 degrees within a single day, is essentially invisible without statistics. Most people have a hard time understanding statistics, and believe they can be “massaged”, etc. (Election polling uses statistics, and there’s almost always a “likely voter” screen. There have been numerous inaccurate election forecasts recently.)

Because climate change causes little outrage, some people cannot be persuaded that it exists, and some cannot be persuaded that is important. The green movement tries education campaigns, not understanding that these don’t work. You can’t make people scared of something that isn’t scary. (Green movement people find climate change scary. Most people do not. The green movement’s problem is they don’t realize this. Depicting the damage causes green movement people to get “fired up”, but ordinary people feel like they should give up as it’s “impossible” to stop the damage. The green movement needs to hire some non-green advertising executives and study risk communication.)

Here’s a link to a blog I sometimes follow, called Money Mustache: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/10/04/so-i-bought-an-electric-car/

You can tell from the name that Mr. Mustache is primarily concerned with finances, not the environment (although he does lean toward the green movement in the linked post). Note that Mr. Mustache could have believed that climate change is a delusion, a hoax, etc, and still would have bought a Nissan Leaf. Many people think that an electric vehicle (especially a new one) is really expensive, but Mr. Mustache suggests otherwise.

If the green movement convinced people to buy electric vehicles without trying to convince the persuadable people that they’re idiots for not believing in climate change… they would be convincing people to do something that (hopefully)* helps the planet anyway. If the green movement convinced people to buy electric cars to reduce the amount of choking air pollution… they would be convincing people to do something that (hopefully)* helps the planet anyway.

However, the green movement doesn’t think like this. They “have” to win the moral argument.

*Sometimes I wonder if electric cars simply move pollution from the car to power plants. I would still support them, since I believe that in the future power plants will move toward more renewable sources and nuclear power, and there will already be cars to rely on this cleaner power.

34

I’m surprised at the diversity of opinions around climate change here. I expected most Dopers to be card-carrying Sierra Club members convinced that global warming was going to kill us all. I see surprisingly little of that.

35

Hell, we won’t even notice it much. At first, like now. Pacific Islanders are, of course, très boned. Next, the subsistence farmer who is so dependent on the good grace of Nature. Some disruption in the cities, as they crowd in to beg for the food that the cities don’t have either. Those who failed to retrain as bicycle messengers and compost.

Personally, I plan to liquidate all my holdings in beachfront property. You might change your username, as it becomes less entertaining.

36

The temperature everywhere on Earth varies by more than 2 degrees over the course of the day. Unless you know some place where it’s always the same temperature at noon as it is at midnight?

37

Excellent point! Wait, is it?

38

We live just a couple blocks away from the beach and only on the second floor. No rising sea levels please.

39

One possible consequence of global warming is a big rush to get a bunch of nuclear power plants up and running as fast as possible … short cutting safety at every opportunity … fifty years from now we’ll be having core meltdowns every few years dumping Cesium 137 into the biosphere at truly dangerous rates …

From The Master’s article “What’s the likeliest doomsday scenario?”

40

Well, it’s certainly a better point than, “People don’t believe in global warming because the temperature doesn’t change outside of cities!” That’s the rhetorical equivalent of James Inhofe waving a snowball at congress and claiming that disproves any warming was happening.