
Domino-effect of climate events could move Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state - ForHackernews
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-events-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state
======
digitalsushi
I am getting to a point of internalizing the planet's health that I have been
keeping my eyes open for therapists that specialize on this topic. It's
difficult to not ruminate on what increasingly sounds like dystopian autumn
years and winter years that aren't worth living to. It's extremely distressing
to read headlines day after day, and the accelerating tone is building. Has
anyone had any luck finding a way to put perspective on it, or figure out a
lie that helps keep you going? I know there's still a lot to figure out. But
each time we figure out more, it seems it's actually worse.

~~~
breakpointalpha
Man, you don't have any faith in human resilience?

An average global temperature increase of 4c is bad, but survivable easily
with modern technology and good planning.

80% of the worlds population live within 50 miles of a coast line. There's
still plenty of room inland.

You want a retirement plan? Buy land in the the Rockies or the Alps.

~~~
graeme
You're joking, right? It's hard to tell, because people propose "adaptation"
seriously quite often.

The loss of all coastal cities would be apocalyptic.

~~~
pliny
While many cities are on a coast, very few of those are built within 1m of sea
level, which the 'worst case' (by 2100) projected in AR5. Loss of coastal
cities over 100 years is not apocalytic, that is a time scale where people
can/will just replace buildings near the advancing coastline with buildings
further inland.

~~~
betterunix2
I am not sure things are quite that linear. Sure, few US cities are on the
coasts, but the ones that are happen to be some of the most important pieces
of the freight distribution network and economy of North America. If the
frequency of catastrophic storms increases by a relatively small amount, we
will cross an inflection point and there will be a rapid cascading failure
across the entire continent.

------
WhompingWindows
This is nothing new: we have long known that positive feedback loops will
accelerate the warming of the planet. First, the polar regions will warm most
quickly due to the earliest feedback loops: snow is reflective, heating
removes snow, water/ground is much less reflective, more snow melts. Second,
we will have more fires (huge GHG emitters), more water vapor (the #1 GHG by
far), and more methane emissions from natural sources which are exposed due to
snow melt.

I don't see much way around this: we're going to have to alter our atmosphere
even further if we want a habitable planet. We're both going to need to stop
altering it by emitting far less GHG, then emit other compounds like
aerosolized sulfates which reflect sunlight, then we'll need to pull out CO2
from the air to deal with the ocean acidification and restore the proper
amount of carbon in the air.

~~~
l_camacho84
How many fossil fuels do we need to burn to accomplish all of this? The
solution is to greatly reduce unnecessary consumption, decentralize
agriculture, avoid private transportation. It's to do less not more

------
newton10471
Based on climate predictions which always seem to be best-case, but end up as
worst-case, it seems possible that the hothouse scenario could come to pass
within my lifetime. I’m 44 years old. I have young children, ages 1 and 5. It
seems entirely possible to me that they could die of non-natural causes
related to climate change and specifically the hothouse scenario. The surreal
thing is that nobody I know seems to be concerned about this. We live in a
conservative neighborhood so anytime I bring up climate change as an issue of
concern to any of our neighbors, I get blank stares. They prefer to talk about
their pets. I feel like the protagonist in a sci-fi movie, the only one who
knows that disaster is just around the corner. Is really possible that I will
be present for the end of human civilization? Its not guaranteed but is seems
increasingly possible, and up to now I never imagined I’d have to deal with
something like this.

