
Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040 - stablemap
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html
======
danieltillett
We are not going to get anywhere until those that benefit from any action pay.
Those that will benefit from any action are mostly not even born yet.

Imagine if the people of the future living in a trashed world could travel
back in time and pay us to do something now. How much would they be willing to
pay? Probably far more than it would cost to fix. All they would need to do is
invent a time machine and they could come back to now, pay us to fix the
problems, and they get to live in an intact world.

Given we haven’t had too many visitors from the future flashing the Benjamins
around, time machines are likely impossible. We do however have a magic way of
allowing the future to pay for actions now as long as we act on their behalf.
This magic is called long-term zero-coupon bonds [0]. The idea is we issue a
whole lot of zero coupon bonds due in 50 years (or more), use the money to
decarbonise the economy and pay off the owners of all the carbon, and the
leave it to the future to pay the debt with an intact world.

I gave a talk on this idea a bit over 10 years ago which I have up on my blog
if anyone is interested [1].

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-
coupon_bond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-coupon_bond)

1\. [https://www.tillett.info/2015/12/13/preventing-global-
climat...](https://www.tillett.info/2015/12/13/preventing-global-climate-
collapse/)

~~~
regularfry
Either time machines are impossible, or there are no people left in the future
to invent one.

~~~
shrikant
I prefer a third possibility -- that time machines are possible, but can only
travel back in a non-recursive manner for a limited sliding window. And we
haven't arrived at the boundary of that window yet.

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Or that it sends you to another dimension, or that the people who do time
travel know that if they do anything, they'll change everything so that they
won't exist ?

------
jamesgagan
If you are concerned about climate change, stop eating animals. Governments
are slow to act, but switching to a plant based diet is something you can do
right now.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-
meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth)

~~~
WA
As an individual, you can’t do that much. But if McDonald’s for example were
to put veggie patties in their burgers by default and beef only on request,
that would actually change something.

In addition: if you have ever tried the veggie burger, it’s surprisingly good
(the beef is a bit tasteless anyways) and I bet most people wouldn’t notice
the difference, especially if McDonald’s pimp their veggie patty a bit more.

~~~
michaelmrose
McDonalds would be out of business and a laughingstock.

~~~
WA
I'd argue this is a matter of marketing.

Also, you don't have to go all-in at once. Introduce a special veggie burger,
maybe even in a few stores or selected countries only. Gradually, switch more
and more burgers to the veggie version.

 _Defaults matter_ , as they say.

~~~
rdl
I wonder if they would be better off pricing it at parity, at a premium to
beef, or lower? I initially thought “heavily subsidize it, maybe put a huge
one on the $1 menu...), but making it a premium option along with their
“specialty” burgers might be better. At some point in the future they drop it
to parity.

------
554070
Does anyone else feel like we'll fail to make reasonable progress on climate
change? I'm naturally inclined towards pessimism, but I feel that the
political solutions aren't going to work out and that the market isn't moving
fast enough for humanity to get ahead of it.

Edit: to clarify, I think that political solutions won't work not because
there aren't good ideas or that we couldn't collectively do a lot, but because
there's too much money and power held by special interest groups that pollute.

~~~
NDizzle
China and India have to be on board for reasonable progress to occur.

~~~
tzs
As far as climate goes, what matters is the amount of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, not where they came from. Greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere
for varying amount of time, depending on the particular gas.

Whatever we finally decide we need to hold warming too, there is some maximum
level of greenhouse gases that we can allow without warming going above our
limit.

If we take that level, and figure out each country's fair share of that, what
we'll find is that the West is responsible for way more of the greenhouse
gases present than is their fair share (with the US the farthest over its
share), and India is way under their fair share.

It would not be unreasonable for India to feel that it is unfair that the West
used cheap fossil fuels to boost itself to first world status and in the
processes went way over their fair quota for greenhouse gases and now wants
India to stay way below its fair quota and give up cheap development to
balance that.

To make it fair, the West would need to subsidize India so that it can afford
to become a developed country without having to use the cheap fossil fuels.
Another way to think of it would be the West paying India for having used up
India's quota for allowed greenhouse gases--essentially a kind of retroactive
cap and trade system.

------
gdubs
I’ve started buying carbon offsets when our family flies (through carbonfund)
and it’s a lot cheaper than what I’d imagined. I think requiring airlines to
offer carbon offsets directly in the ticket checkout flow would be impactful.
I’d go a step further and have people opted-in by default so they have to un-
check a box if they really don’t want to spend the extra ten bucks.

Also, as others have said: eating less meat is an effective way to lower your
carbon footprint.

~~~
konschubert
I don't know how effective these carbon offsets are.

Many of them may just be re-planting some forests that would have been planted
anyways or may be even playing some more obvious scam.

~~~
ForHackernews
You can buy credits here [https://www.goldstandard.org/get-involved/make-an-
impact](https://www.goldstandard.org/get-involved/make-an-impact) for projects
that have been audited and certified.

------
mtreis86
Link to report:

[http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/](http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/)

Looks like this is the paper that presents the model for the calculations:

[https://www.geosci-model-
dev.net/11/2273/2018/gmd-11-2273-20...](https://www.geosci-model-
dev.net/11/2273/2018/gmd-11-2273-2018.pdf)

~~~
locusm
Source code available too [https://github.com/OMS-
NetZero/FAIR](https://github.com/OMS-NetZero/FAIR)

------
usaar333
The article seems to paint a rather non-crisis economically, perhaps
unintentionally:

> The United States, it said, could lose roughly 1.2 percent of gross domestic
> product for every 1.8 degrees of warming.

I guess that's in Fahrenheit, but again.. not really scary numbers. We're
talking about two years of ordinary productivity growth being lost over a
decade+. Bad, but nowhere close to resulting in the future being worse than
the present, much less society ending.

For how much we all worry about global warning, why are the estimated GDP
numbers not coming in much worse?

~~~
fsloth
"why are the estimated GDP numbers not coming in much worse?"

A guess: Because the hardest hit areas do not contribute as much to GDP. Most
of world GDP is created outside of the tropics.

The gruesome prediction from this report is that the poor areas next to
tropics will come refugess camps unlike anything seen before (think Blade
Runner or Judge Dread with the skycrapers replaced by an ocean of tents and
shacks). And the rich world will invest in border controls and barbed wire.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Why would you expect this instead of people simply gradually moving inland and
continuing to do more or less exactly what they were already doing? The
developing world and developed are identical in that population densities are
extremely disproportionate. We tend to have very high densities near water and
much lower densities inland. This creates a dual effect of magnifying the
numeric impact of climate change, but also giving us immense 'safe' buffers.
If we view climate change as a sort of terraforming then the primary effect
would be to push coastal regions further inland - not to permanently remove
them.

And even in in the low probability worst case scenarios water levels will
begin to plateau off simply because there's a fixed amount of possible water
on Earth. This [1] National Geographic article from a while back showed
exactly what the world would look like if all the ice melted, resulting the
maximal possible increase in sea levels - about 216 feet. The peculiar thing
is the world would be reshaped, but it'd mostly be the exact same place. And
keep in mind that this would happen over many many decades as the sea levels
inched forward, thus giving people time to calmly and orderly adjust. It's not
like one day you go to bed and when you wake up New York is New Atlantis.

[1] -
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-s...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-
seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/)

~~~
fsloth
"Why would you expect this instead of people simply gradually moving inland"

Please read the article. The gradient of liveability is not away from the
shores. It's away from the equator.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
No, it's not. The real risk is in coastal areas, as the article emphasizes.
The headline is based on the quote _" [The] United States along with
Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam
are home to 50 million people who will be exposed to the effects of increased
coastal flooding by 2040, if 2.7 degrees of warming occur."_

I'm unsure if I'm reading too much into your comment as it was not
particularly informative, but you seem to be implying that the problem with
climate change is the warming itself, which will be most pronounced around the
areas most exposed to the sun's energy -- the equatorial regions. But this
isn't the issue. Humans, plants, and animals of all sorts could be fine with
temperatures much higher than they are now if that's all that changed. The
real risk of climate change is the ancillary effects like the rising of tides.
This effect will be most pronounced in coastal areas with dense population
hubs - which are the exact areas they mention. And this is already happening.

For instance the most recent storms we've had including in Florida, North
Carolina, Louisiana and so on were likely at least somewhat exasperated by
climate change. And indeed there are people that are going to decide enough is
enough and decide to move inland. These are now part of the people counted in
these numbers. Something people often forget is that climate change is not
something that _will_ happen, but something that _is_ happening.

~~~
fsloth
Sure, coasts will have issues, but like you said yourself, there is quite a
lot of land mass to to absorb the population likely within the same polity.

I've understood the predicted changes to weather patterns are such that the
area between the tropics will be most impacted. This includes more droughts
etc. So it's not directly related to sun's radiation, just about how the heat
will be distributed in the global weather and what effects it will have. I
don't know _why_ tropics are more affected than other areas.

[https://theconversation.com/why-blowing-the-1-5c-global-
warm...](https://theconversation.com/why-blowing-the-1-5c-global-warming-goal-
will-leave-poor-tropical-nations-sweating-most-of-all-96988)

I only _slightly_ exaggerated my comments about telt camp conurbations. People
are already drowning by the thousands trying to reach Europe via Mediterranean
crossing because the landmass of Africa offers so little hope for the future
even risking drowning is better than staying. Imagine how much worse it will
get when the climate gets more inhospitable (the problems are not caused by
climate but by corruption but worse climate is not going to help the issue).

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Ah! I think what that article is trying to say is that when you have a greater
variance in temperatures, any change is going to be something that is more
regularly tolerated. E.g. - imagine you add 5 degrees of temperature to an
area that varies between 20 and 100 degrees throughout the year, spending only
10% of the year at temperatures above 95 degrees. That means during 90% of the
year there would be no change in temperature that has not already been
seasonally experienced for centuries. By contrast if you do the same to a
country that spends 100% of the year at 98 degrees, then adding 5 degrees
would have a consistent 0-variance impact all year long above anything ever
experienced. Since there's the least variance in the seasons at the equator
(due to Earth's axial tilt) they then suggest that climate change will thus
affect the equatorial regions the most.

But I think this is a gross simplification that again gets into the thinking
that the temperature is, in and of itself, the problem. It's not. The global
climatic system is in an equilibrium. At any given point in the sea for
instance the difference between ice and water is the slightest change in
temperature. Bump up the temperature a few degrees and that equilibrium
radically shifts. This, in turn, can have cascading effects. It doesn't matter
that in one location it's now only e.g. 65 when they have heat that goes up to
100 degrees during their summer. It's not about the heat - it's about the
ancillary global effects of that change in heat levels, that will affect
everywhere. This is one of the many reasons that I think the change in
terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" was extremely
appropriate. Global warming is not a problem, but the climatic effects it
causes may be.

Our micro-level predictions for climate change have so far been pretty awful,
but our macro-level predictions have been decent. So I think it's more
reasonable to look at the 'big picture' effects, like rising seas. When you
get into micro predictions you get silly things. This [1] is an article from
AP:

 _" A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped
off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is
not reversed by the year 2028. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create
an exodus of ″eco-refugees" threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown,
director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He
said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse
effect before it goes beyond human control. As the warming melts polar
icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the
Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an
interview on Wednesday. Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of
Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A
fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off
its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency study."_

I changed the date there. That article is from 1989. The real catastrophe
deadline given was 2000, 18 years ago.

[1] -
[https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0](https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0)

------
root_axis
I think we need to start wrestling with the idea that the anticipated climate
crisis is impossible to stop and that it's worthwhile to begin preparing to
live in a world with a warmer climate.

The reality is that most people don't care about climate change and the
world's leadership is increasingly hostile to the idea of dealing with it.
Even if our leaders were willing, the absolute dominance of private industry
in this regard precludes any possibility of progress on the issue of reducing
emissions.

On the _other_ hand, we might be able to develop technologies that mitigate
the impact of a warmer climate or begin developing and researching strategies
to take advantage of agricultural possibilities that might be opened up by a
warmer climate. The worst thing we can do right now for the populations that
will be impacted by this is to assume there is a possibility that we can curb
this disaster rather than taking these 40 to 60 years to brace for impact.

~~~
CM30
Can't disagree with this. Short of a one world government with dictatorship
esque powers (which would be a very bad idea for other reasons), the chances
of people magically changing their lifestyle/society completely changing
overnight to fix climate change are pretty slim to none.

It's science and technology that'll solve these issues, make it possible to
live even in 'extreme' conditions and at some eventual point in the future,
either reverse or avoid the issue altogether.

------
fersho311
My wife and I are turning 30 and our parents are starting to pressure us to
have kids. However, we had both decided against having kids because the
thought of someone we love worrying about global climate change crisis is too
much for us to handle emotionally. We tried explaining our concerns to our
parents but they don't seem to give a shit.

Other than sending our parents reports like these, any suggestions on how we
can convince our parents that having kids and subjecting them to a lifetime of
dealing with global warming might not be such a great idea?

~~~
simonbarker87
Don’t bother. It’s your lives, her body and ultimately nothing to do with
them. Head over to /r/childfree on reddit to perhaps get some better advice
but fundamentally it really has nothing to do with your parents, or anyone
else, if you have children and your reasons behind that choice.

~~~
fersho311
Went there, couldn't find any valuable insights / discussions. Feels more like
a cult than a group of healthy independent thinkers.

------
consumer451
We need to put a solar shade at L1.[0] That will give us time to switch to a
renewable electric economy, before hitting the catastrophic methane release
from permafrost thaw.[1]

At 7C, mathematical modeling [2] shows that we may lose two thirds of our
oxygen generation (plankton) which could lead to complete human extinction
within ~3600 years.[3]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions)

[2]
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11538-015-0126-...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11538-015-0126-0)

[3]
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12576-016-0501-0](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12576-016-0501-0)

~~~
andygates
But the sunshade is megascale engineering that you'd have to get everyone in
on - and quickly, so that's a real project risk, even assuming it's
worthwhile.

And the clathrate gun was overhyped.

~~~
consumer451
Out of all geoengineering solutions that I am aware of, the sunshade is the
most likely to work, and with the least drawbacks as it is the only truly
global solution. It is also pretty simple physics as compared to other
solutions which involve complex system modeling and unknown side effects.

All of the solutions require everyone on board, and quickly. The biggest issue
is cost. At Falcon heavy prices, getting the requisite 20 million tons to L1
approaches 100 trillion dollars, according to my back of the napkin
calculations. BFR may get that down an order of magnitude. The only way to pay
for something like that is the really hard part, a global financial
transaction tax, or some similar scheme.

Could you point me to anything showing that the methane release threat is
overblown? I would love that reassurance. But even the Trump administration
acknowledges 4C by 2100, there is no reason to think that it would stop there.

------
rdl
Climate engineering seems like a better bet than massive political/economic
change across the entire world in advance of clear harm.

It is relatively easy (but still difficult in an absolute sense) to get
support in sufficiently rich countries to handle clearly demonstrated,
immediate threats — clean air, clean water, removal of litter, etc. These also
tend to have relatively low costs, and the costs they do impose tend to be on
large industries which also have pricing power to pass it along.

There have definitely been successful global environmental actions. The
CFC/Ozone thing was probably the most clear; it was a pretty substantial and
demonstrable harm, and the costs of switching were relatively low. (It was
painful for fire suppression, since halon is still superior to alternatives,
and did require a lot of special stuff around auto air conditioners, but it
was basically industries which could pass along costs.)

Acid rain/sulfur dioxide/etc was a lot harder because it crossed
jurisdictional boundaries, but within the US it was at least pretty easy to
use the federal level. Hasn’t worked as well with China...

CO2 has the problems of an indirect link between the pollution and harms
(merely raising CO2 in the air is fine; the issue is science showing a few
levels downstream this is a problem, and it isn’t as clear as most other forms
of pollution.). It is also much more fundamentally tied to economic activity,
and alternatives have much higher costs (including higher forms of other
pollution due to decreased efficiency...), and is pretty widely distributed
across consumers and smaller businesses. As well, a lot of the problem is the
3-4B people living at a lower standard of living who if they industrialize the
same way will make 50% reductions in the other 3-4B pretty meaningless.

I’d rather bet on climate engineering.

------
mistrial9
California recently completed its 4th Climate Assessment task

[http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/](http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/)

------
rbrbr
People are too slow with change. Our worldly scenario is unique because we can
basically predict our end now. Like weather forecast becomes more precise the
closer it gets to the forecasted day, we know more precisely how and when we
will end every day. And like weather, practically there is little we can
(will) do to change it.

------
artur_makly
Oh but this gets better!

This is a great dissertation on how the GeoPolitics will play this little game
out:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY)

\- by Gwynne Dyer

------
Balgair
That's… well.. bleak. At BEST 1.5 C uptick by 2040? Am I reading that right?
That is really not good. Like, as in, really bad, and that is the most
optimistic report they can generate? It’s hard to not feel, well, despair
here. First, good on the scientists for keeping up with the reporting and
modeling. That’s not an easy job. Second, we all know it matters for fuck all.
Donny can hardly twit a full sentence, let alone understand anything in that
report. If democracy is running out the clock, then autocracy is gumming the
pacifier.

But, I dunno man. It just feels like we’re closing up the house. Maybe it’s
because I just moved out of a bad apartment, but I get that feeling here too.
Like, the walls were shoddy, the electrical system was haywire, the neighbors
were loud and overcrowding the place, the constant noise was too much, and the
fights, oh the fights just outside my bedroom window. It was just nutz. But it
feels like moving out of that place, like closing down the house of a recently
deceased loved one. There is all the history in a place, all these things and
pictures that people made and cherished. But there is no-one left to love them
anymore. You’re cleaning out your now dead grandma’s stuff, going through
photos that you’ve no idea about, if she really thought well of the people or
the place in it, those clothes of your long dead grandfather” These were his
dress blues from when he just got out” Maybe he’s buried in another set, but
only grandma would know and she is gone. And you know it’s important that
someone know if Joe is resting in his blues or not, but no-one will know ever
again.

That feeling of a deep clouded sea; you know it goes down down down, but
you’ve no idea how deep or what leviathans of a life are flitting about in
there, and the light is going out and the air is cooling and the fog is
rolling in and you have to go back to the docks and you know you’ll never be
back out there to that spot of ocean.

It’s that final echoing feeling of that dark, dingy apartment. You had so much
emotion there, so much life, not all of it bad. You know the floorboards that
creak just so, the time that the garbage company comes in the mornings, how
your cat really loves that one warm sport near the equinoxes. But now the
musty smell of the shower mixed with the bleach and it’s…. over. The carpets
are cleaned and all the fibers lay one way and the other, making dark and
light colors from the reflected glow of the blinded window. Somehow the
background noise of the crying babies next door is gone, the street murmurs
are like ghosts and drum along. You can hear your shoes slap along for the
first time ever. All is as you found it, and there is no life you recognize
there now. It’s colder on your cheeks.

That’s the feeling that I get with these climate reports. Like I am just
supposed to be a person that is destined to clean up the house, move out the
stuff, as best I can, quietly, mournfully. Like, I am, just here to witness it
all, like the bottom of the 9th when the home team is down by 7 and everyone
has already gone home in late September, the pennant race long lost, the hopes
of summer gone. The lights are still bright as the dark moves in, illuminating
a field that everyone is just out on, doing the motions. Like, just sitting
there in the stands, hoping, but knowing the game is over. That my job is just
to record the score, for the books, that maybe 10 people will ever look at.
Trying to secret away scrolls from the Ostrogoths, for a brighter time. I’m
hoping that being a witness means something for the future. That acting like
Samuel Pepys will make me the next one, because I know it’s so fantastically
unlikely that I will be, but I’ve nothing else to do really. Like walking
around empty streets after the bars close and the rain lets up, neon
reflecting off the asphalt.

I know the game’s not over, but I can’t help but sigh with each out. I can’t
help but linger in the last darkness of the cleaned house, that single light
left to turn off. I can help but just wipe my face as the boat hums back into
the docks, not knowing if the salt is from the water or a tear.

------
wiz21c
FTA : >>>Ms. Warrick said her organization intends to campaign for governments
to invest in carbon capture technology. Such technology, which is currently
too expensive for commercial use, could allow coal to continue to be widely
used.

I hope we'll talk about the pulmonary diseases her family will get in some
years

second point : this post lasted less than 24 hours on HN's home page. It's a
telling sign.

------
patrickg_zill
The skeptical part of me seems bound to point out that we've been told that it
would happen by 2020, or even earlier.

~~~
Angostura
What were we told? That the artic ice would be in retreat and that the
permafrost would begin to melt? Sounds as if the predictions were pretty
accurate.

