> In a subsequent paper, Nordhaus claimed that even a 6°C increase would only reduce global income by only 7.9%, compared to what it would be in the complete absence of global warming.
> A critical feature of human physiology is our ability to dissipate internal heat by perspiration. This becomes impossible when the combination of heat and humidity, known as the “wet bulb temperature”, exceeds 35°C. Above this level, we are unable to dissipate the heat generated by our bodies, and the accumulated heat will kill a healthy individual within three hours. Scientists have estimated that a 5.5°C increase would mean that even New York would experience 55 days per year when the combination of temperature and humidity would be deadly (Mora et al., 2017, Figure 4, p. 504).
Honestly, that should be enough to sell the message on its own.
Regardless of the process, if the aim of the IPCC's messaging is to change behaviour, its efforts are misdirected.
IPCC talks about the plight of the planet, by describing opaque physics and biodynamics processes, as if ordinary people will join the dots, make quantitative scientific appraisals, and selflessly decide to make sacrifices to save the planet.
Most people don't think about the whole planet, or thermodynamics, or the future of humanity. They think about their hip pockets, themselves, and raising kids on a budget.
Renewables are cheaper!
Save money heating and cooling your house with solar energy!
Drive an electric car and save money on fuel and services!
Those are the messages IPCC should be putting out. Everybody loves a bargain. The promise of renewables, once we get over the develop and build cost humps, is infinite bargains. Sell that vista. It's easier than selling science.
Just like for jQuery, it seems people have forgotten the original reason for which it was created: the IPCC exists to provide to policymakers the scientific evidence of climate change with ironclad credibility, and do this in a context where climate change denial was becoming republican policy.
As a result of the review process that ensures all credible criticism is heard it makes very conservative predictions, but at least you have to either accept them as conservative or just outright deny reality.
IPCC is meant to sell to policy makers, not individuals.
Even there, they fail at it. The economic gains of big deployment are not mentioned.
The "bargain" of an electric car costs at least 3x more than a gasoline or diesel version.
Solar panels and wind turbines have limitations. They're good to build, regardless.
Electric vehicles have lower range and require changes in infrastructure to work. Still with it.
Now for adapting agriculture, which is still required, that is a pure cost.
Around 36k is spent on the average car in the USA.
The ID.3 is cheaper than that without subsidy (it is almost on parity with the regular Golf with subsidy) and if you were to 3x that average you would arrive in luxury car territory. You would get a Model X.
The ID.3 will also save you around $800 in maintenance and fuel (in Germany at least) per year.
Around $36K is spent on the average new car in the US. If your primary goal is to own a car as cheaply as possible with still great reliability, buying a 5-year old used Camry/Accord/CR-V/Prius (which will overwhelmingly not be pure electric) is a better choice than any new electric.
While it is great that we have real scientific research made available to the common man, as too much is locked up in journals and whatnot, it would be a mistake to dumb it down for the ordinary man.
There are many talented journalists around the world who is much better suited for this task, and there is no shortage of popular science everywhere from web sites to TV documentaries. These science journalists are dependent on research being available, and meta-analyses such as the IPCC report are very suitable to them.
IPCC has the dual purpose of also being an input to international environment negotiations, so they do tend to make their material more accessible than others, but it has so far managed to stay foremost a scientific organisation.
Yes, there is a reason: the time of all the authors involved in creating these reports is a scarce resource. Reaching consensus on the final text of one report within the body of authors is already a tedious and lengthy process. Having them go through all that for another, separate text will just keep them from doing more of the research that actually matters.
My horizon for civilization collapse is "probably not before 2030".
The most likely scenario I perceive is heavily populated tropical and subtropical areas becoming uninhabitable, initially via failure of subsistence farming, leading to mass migration, and rise of fascistic governments in temperate regions in reaction. Fascistic governments characteristically start wars. Wars in the presence of other fascistic governments spiral out of control, ending meaningful global commerce and triggering global economic collapse. Spiraling war tends toward thermonuclear exchange.
All this happens well before, e.g., significant ice sheet collapse, or climate-caused loss of temperate-zone agriculture.
Given global economic collapse, CO2 production might fall off as extraction and delivery are disrupted, but processes already begun would take long to wind down. Thus, ocean acidification might still collapse fisheries and eliminate major protein input for whole regional populations. Fisheries anyway depend on reliable fuel delivery.
We see hints of all of the above already, with massive migrations to Europe attempted from southerly countries where climate stresses have released forces that tend to civil war; and falling fishery yield. Numerous separate phenomena all produce waves of refugees, whether water stress, declining ag yield, or even migration from immediate neighbors that exceeds already stressed local carrying capacity.
Fascistic governments are gaining in all regions; the US's step back must be counted as a blip, as very nearly half its population voted for continuation, and their elected representatives even tried to force the issue.
My question is not, how can we slow global climate disruption; it is, how can we prevent near-term global civilizational collapse? Collapse does not seem like the best way to reverse climate disruption, presuming it would even work.
If methane clathrates and permafrost carbon are released by (already well begun) local extremes of arctic warming, or loss of sea ice reduces albedo, falling industrial CO2 might not slow temperature rise or ocean acidification. Global nuclear fallout, "nuclear winter", and vaporized industrial base would make any sort of recovery difficult and slow, over decades or even centuries.
I think I agree with you on the big lines. Although I'm guessing large population migration will be more due to rising water (most humans live along some cost line). And if millions of people have to move, there will be wars with or without fascit goverments. With this scenario, the 10 year time frame seems pessimistic, I think 2050 is more likely.
Either way, the earth system will regulate, it would be nice if civilisation managed to survive the transition. I'm pretty sure there will still be humans around, happy humans I'm not so sure.
Agriculture will certainly collapse in many places long before sea level rise is noticeable.
We see reduced rainfall in many areas already, enough to have materially affected crop yields and triggered political instability, generating refugees. (Increased rainfall in other places doesn't help.) Insect populations are collapsing already. I don't think we know how low such populations may go before loss of pollination affects crop yields.
The only good news is that renewable power cost is still in free fall. It is not clear if it can be built out fast enough to cut CO2 output. Desalination will fill in for rainfall in some places, rescuing yields, although probably not in the places that will produce refugees.
It's important to remember that cutting CO2 output is simply not enough. We need to displace all fossil combustion for energy with renewables and also generate enough power to sequester the CO2 we've already released by burning fossil fuels. The magnitude of the problem cannot be overstated.
> A critical feature of human physiology is our ability to dissipate internal heat by perspiration. This becomes impossible when the combination of heat and humidity, known as the “wet bulb temperature”, exceeds 35°C. Above this level, we are unable to dissipate the heat generated by our bodies, and the accumulated heat will kill a healthy individual within three hours. Scientists have estimated that a 5.5°C increase would mean that even New York would experience 55 days per year when the combination of temperature and humidity would be deadly (Mora et al., 2017, Figure 4, p. 504).
Honestly, that should be enough to sell the message on its own.