
Wildlife collapse from climate change is predicted to hit suddenly and sooner - jgwil2
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/climate/wildlife-population-collapse-climate-change.html
======
hyperman1
These articles scare me. Another one with exactly the same message: Things are
worse than we thought, it was already bad, we are not coming close to doing
enough to save us, there isn't even much of a plan.

And then I see most of the west handling covid-19 just like we handle
everything: No clear direction, minimal effort, leaders asleep at the wheel,
politicians trying to get the better of each other, rich people get richer.

Climate was an important theme in our last elections, but even the green party
had no clue whatsoever, and the voters made it clear they did not even
remotely care.

Now Covid-19 is easy stuff compared to the climate. I was hoping Covid-19
could serve as a wake up call for the cost of incompetence in our
organisations. But that does not seem to happen.

Covid-19 has a pattern I also see in the climate: First, nobody cares for some
theoretical crisis far away, then its in our countries but still not personal,
and by now everybody knows about a specific person who died. Climate is a
theoretical crisis far away for now.

So how do we proceed from here?

~~~
perfunctory
> So how do we proceed from here?

Like we always do when our leaders fail us. Organise and rebel.

~~~
yters
So on top of environmental collapse we can have social collapse as well?
Sounds like a recipe for success.

~~~
cultus
A social collapse would coincide with an economic collapse and lower
emissions. Honestly, speaking as a former climate change-adjacent
geophysicist, I'd take it.

It is becoming fairly clear we will have revolutions. At some point, things
will deteriorate to the point it will happen. Normalcy bias is a hell of a
drug, and we are all sniffing it really hard.

The ruling class is unwilling and unable to solve this or any other wide-scale
societal problem we have. Ruling classes never yield power without force.

~~~
yters
Why do you prefer that outcome? Social and economic collapse could cost
millions of lives, and mostly among the poorest parts of the world.

~~~
cultus
We're headed towards a collapse either way, with many, many millions dying.
Very possibly billions over the course of this century. Either it's a major
society upheaval leading towards positive change, or it's just general
societal breakdown as civilization as we know it becomes impossible. Our
current political-economic system is simply not up to the challenge, so not
having upheaval is not an option.

A comparatively mild collapse sooner is better than later. This really is an
existential threat like we have never experienced.

~~~
yters
Have you considered alternative scenarios?

~~~
cultus
Yes. This is something I think about quite a bit, since I did used to work on
climate-change related geophysics. If we started combating climate change
decades ago, we wouldn't need such a drastic change. Realistically, no real
change will happen for another decade, but our backs are already up against a
wall.

Having waited so long, the changes required are unbelievably radical and
painful, in that our entire way of life must change. AOC and Bernie's Green
New Deal is woefully inadequate, and that's considered extreme. I can't see
that happening when we can't even figure out how to make paper face masks.

~~~
yters
But if human civilization has flourished in much warmer earth in the past, why
are you so convinced that a warming globe is necessarily a bad thing? Humans
seem pretty adaptable, especially if the change is slow like climate change
seems to be. That would seem like a good alternative view to investigate
before putting all your money on "destroy the current world order".

~~~
cultus
Human civilization has not flourished in a much warmer earth. That is 100%
falase.

Human civilization has only existed during the Holocene, which has been a
period of stability. We are now in the Anthropocene.

These changes are also very fast. By 2050, we will be living in a different
world. Even in the 2030s, climate change will cause massive amounts of
instability in developing countries due to droughts and famines, and huge
migrant crises. It only takes 2-3 major food producing regions to have
significantly failed harvests at once to have a famine on the scale of 1-2
billion going hungry. With a stable climate, this hasn't happened. However, it
becomes more likely all the time.

The changes we are facing will lead to large portions of the tropics being
uninhabitable without A/C and unsuitable for agriculture. That is where most
of the world lives. This change is happening very fast, faster than we can
adapt. Our industrial civilization depends on immense resource consumption on
a global scale. This will be completely disrupted.

Trust me, I know a lot about the climate and its effects. It is a bad thing.
No one seriously says it isn't. It's delusional to think it could be a good
thing. Your line of thinking is just a continuation of the denialist garbage
that got us into this mess.

~~~
yters
I'll take your word you are an expert, and what you say sounds alarming. I
cannot make all the connections, though. For instance, much of the Middle East
lives in temperatures that fry eggs during the midday. I was in Afghanistan
during the summer, not always with A/C. Not pleasant, but I wouldn't say
uninhabitable. I also wonder about being unsuitable for agriculture, since
plants flourish in greenhouses, which are quite hot and humid.

On the other hand, I can accept there will be large droughts, famines, and
huge human migrations in the future. Our population continues to both climb
dramatically, while congregating in a few very dense areas, mostly the cities
where living is easier. That is clearly an unsustainable model.

~~~
cultus
I used to be a glaciologist, specifically. People don't grow significant crops
in those hot deserts. Afganistan has hot summers, but not horrifically hot
compared to some areas. Afganistan also has low humidity, which is key for our
ability to perspire. The worst-hit areas are humid tropical climates.

Middle eastern populations in the hottest and humidest areas usually have AC.
Most other places aren't quite so bad, due to lower humidity if not lower
temperature. Traditional populations lived in stone or mud brick houses that
can withstand the midday heat better.

There has been several occasions recently where the heat index has gotten near
fatal in Rajasthan and Punjab, which caused quite a few deaths.

Greenhouses aren't that hot, usually not more than 30C. Not many plants like
it super hot. Even plants in hot climates will do better if its a bit cooler.
With hotter climates, plants (at least the ones people rely on) undergo more
heat stress and have shorter growing seasons. Much of Africa is drying,
especially the Sahel. Similar situations will occur in many parts of S.
America and Asia.

A big distinciton here is timeframe and how much mitigation happens. We are
more or less locked into a 3C rise, which is really bad. And that's our
effective best-case scenario. However, if mitigation fails, and it has thus
far, a 7C rise by the end of the century is not out of the question. That will
lead to a total civilizational collapse and probably eventual human
extinction. We wouldn't be able to maintain an industrial civilization in such
an environment, and we'd have to fall back on localized, less industrial
production. But, the environment would be so degraded that non-intensive
agriculture probably couldn't provide enough food to stave off continual
population declines.

~~~
yters
Thanks, this is more convincing. So it looks like it is the,combination of
great heat and humidity. Would that combination lead to more cloud cover and
then back to cooling?

And, thank you for answering my questions, vs just dismissing me as a
denialist. The way you are approaching the issue is making it easier for me to
understand.

------
samizdis
_How did you go bankrupt?

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly._

― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

~~~
Glavnokoman
Yeah. But the bankruptcy of the ecosystems make me sad.

~~~
cosmic_shame
It's going to make all of us a lot worse than sad.

------
swsieber
There seems to be a huge assumption that when a species is exposed to higher
than usual temperatures they'll be a collapse of said species. Certainly this
holds true for some species, but all species?

I'm a little skeptical. Basically the paper says that large groups of species
will encounter higher temperatures than they have before (1850-2005, going by
mean annual temperature, and higher defined by 5 years all above the previous
high mean). And because of that, they'll be a huge ecological disaster.

I get the temperature part. That makes intuitive sense (the whole planet is
getting hotter, duh), and doesn't seem like anything new.

What does seem new is the seemingly (I'm up for explanations about why they
make sense) arbitrary threshold they use.

Is this a good paper, or just an appeal to fear? (That's a real question, but
to me at first glance, it seems like an appeal to fear).

~~~
dpau
It's not whether or not individual members of a species can survive if it's a
little hotter. The problem is that climate change is destroying entire
ecosystems in which these individuals exist. A polar bear can do ok in a zoo
in San Diego, but polar bears will go extinct once their habitat in the Arctic
disappears.

~~~
sebazzz
And don't forget the food chain. Everything at the top is dependent on below.

------
stephc_int13
The original paper is talking about "abrupt ecological disruption", but the
NYT article title is "Wildlife Collapse From Climate Change Is Predicted to
Hit Suddenly and Sooner"

I've read the paper, and if I understood correctly the hypothesis is that
because there are less usual seasonal variations of temperatures near the
equator, ecosystems in this area are more susceptible to be disrupted by
global warming.

Talking about disruption seems safe from a scientific point of view, but
collapse is almost synonymous with extinction, this is quite a leap...

------
throwaway888abc
[http://archive.is/Odrte](http://archive.is/Odrte)

------
loopz
The emperor have no clothes!

