I acknowledge your position but it is very blind to the real impact global warming is already having. Yes, we, meaning the decently off in rich countries, will adapt. In other places this is much more difficult - see Bangladesh, Pakistan, various sub-saharan countries.
We will not go extinct, but millions or tens of millions will die from climate change over the coming years and decades (and many have already died), many many more will suffer for it. No, technology will not fix this in the near term.
It's similar to air pollution, which we have many ways of stemming and are estimated to kill 7 Mio per year, much less however in todays rich countries which can invest to reduce it (and still do woefully little as everyone wants a big car). https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2
> but it is very blind to the real impact global warming is already having.
Can you be specific?
Like, I get that every time there is a natural disaster, the media blares about climate change. But, for example, there's been no trend in hurricanes. Political leaders love to blame climate change for their poor policies (water management, forrest management, etc). And certainly some of the small sea-level rise we have seen is definitely from climate change.
But we've also seen "global greening". Productivity of crops keep going up: maybe in spite of climate change -- but maybe partially due to CO2 increases.
Warming of the arctic and sub-polar regions is probably the most visible in-your-face trend we can look at. It's been warming, it's getting faster, it's breaking records of temperature. Another point we can look at is oceans warming, which is definitely happening and we don't have a complete picture of all the cascading effects such warming might trigger.
The issue of being specific is that you need to look at a diverse dataset, point out trends, while still being prepared and ready with arguments for the counterpoint of "but these are tiny timeframes in geological scale". It's a very slow moving phenomenon, if there's a small increase right now in forest fires it'd require to plot it over 30-50 years to show someone "look, this is definitely the result of what we've done 100 years ago".
It might be alarmist to link every atmospherical natural disaster to global warming, at the same time it's hard to ignore an uptick of droughts, massive flooding events, if we need to wait until we gather enough empirical data to absolutely conclude it is directly caused by global warming we will be too late.
Could there be a failure of water management, forest management and so on affecting us? Yes, I agree, those need to properly address a changing environment, we just don't know how fast that environment will change and how drastic our changes need to happen.
> But we've also seen "global greening". Productivity of crops keep going up: maybe in spite of climate change -- but maybe partially due to CO2 increases.
Global greening will not keep up with all the energy we're making the atmosphere retain as a result of CO2, just thinking in pure thermodynamics terms: if there's more energy being contained in the system, everything subsystem has more energy to use: winds, currents, rain, etc.
It won't help either with ecosystems that don't depend on greenery, like the Arctic.
> In other places this is much more difficult - see Bangladesh, Pakistan, various sub-saharan countries.
At this point I have to ask what's these countries excuse not to adapt. Isn't it the government's job to plan for these events? What makes it so difficult?
Perhaps this [0] has more to do with it than climate change...
The west is working hard at lowering it's emissions, but all that work is getting undone because China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete [0]. Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has:
- Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%)
- A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%)
Meanwhile for the same period China has had
- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)
- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007
So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation.
Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.
Just calling out that inevitably, you'll hear from another side of this debate that will claim the West is trying to suppress rising countries like China from becoming globally competitive because the west is trying to get them "force green policies" on other countries and skip the parts we had the luxury to go through.
Never mind the fact that you can modernize in a way that isn't environmentally destructive, mind you. I've seen this happen on HN multiple times w/r/ to mentioning China's environmental policies
From the planet's perspective, climate change doesn't matter. Mass extinction events are rounding errors on geologic / deep time scales. We can launch all the nukes tomorrow and it won't matter in a few thousand years.
Climate change "matters" in relation to it being an anthropocene problem, and the only way to make it matter to humans requires using metrics that can be coordinated around.
So from planet's perspective best would be to downgrade living standards of everyone alive today to pre-industrial levels. As that will lead to lowest CO2 emissions?
Really no good reason not to at this point. Its demonstrably beneficial from less pollution to lower overall emissions, and builds up a "next gen" of expertise that will be extremely valuable over the next century, whoever gets these investments done will be in a great place over the next century relative to those who are later to the game, and that expertise will be very valuable (and a huge engine for economic growth).
> will claim the West is trying to suppress rising countries like China from becoming globally competitive because the west is trying to get them "force green policies" on other countries and skip the parts we had the luxury to go through.
What these posters don't understand (and I'm sure certain are paid not to understand it [0]) is that the West didn't have the luxury to just be able to import environmentally friendly technologies and industrial processes from somewhere else; it had to bootstrap itself from nothing.
It seems that the same people that complain that China is building too many coal plants are the same people that complain that China builds 80% of the world's batteries and 80% of the world's solar panels.
China gets a higher percentage of its electricity from renewable than the US. China's EV market share is 34%. China's emissions per PPP$ are dropping at a rate faster than US's are.
Could China do better? Absolutely. But those in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
> It seems that the same people that complain that China is building too many coal plants are the same people that complain that China builds 80% of the world's batteries and 80% of the world's solar panels.
Usually these are two different sets of people. But people tend to assign an homogenous identity to all China critics. In fact, I don't think anyone is really complaining about Chinese solar panels beyond dumping allegations (that they are selling them undercost to force out international competitors), battery is just another variation of pollution concerns and hoarding of rare earth minerals (which really aren't that rare). Coal plants, well, it really only affects China. My complaints about them came from living in Beijing during bad AQI days.
> But those in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
I believe this phrase was coined by Kruschev when he invented the what aboutism.
Benefits of fossil fuels for developing countries greatly outweigh risks of climate change. Preventing climate change is a luxury good for wealthy countries so that they can get the psychological benefits from stability and nature worship.
Luckily, that's no longer true. Solar panels and $8000 EV's are cheaper than natgas plants and gasoline cars. And if the fossil fuel deliveries are interrupted for any reason, the economy doesn't immediately collapse.
We will not go extinct, but millions or tens of millions will die from climate change over the coming years and decades (and many have already died), many many more will suffer for it. No, technology will not fix this in the near term.
It's similar to air pollution, which we have many ways of stemming and are estimated to kill 7 Mio per year, much less however in todays rich countries which can invest to reduce it (and still do woefully little as everyone wants a big car). https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2