For decades I've heard, "what if the scientists are all wrong and it's not as bad as we thought?" and I always thought (not being much of an optimist), "what if they're wrong and it's worse?".
I've spent the last few weeks in both southern and northern parts of France and Italy. Places that I have visited once or twice a year, every year in the last 15-20 years.
It's so patently obvious that the weather in such places has changed in ways that are irremediably compromised by now. Especially in the last 10 years, there was a tangible speed-up in the desertification process. We're so further down the road that I wonder how we're still even doubting the situation is way worse than previously predicted. These regions will look like sub-mediterranean African coastal deserts within the next 30-40 years.
Even the local deniers have fully shifted from the original "There's no climate change occurring" to "This is THE NEW NORMAL, why are you surprised, you better get used to it."
Some climate scientists have been somewhat transparent about this, saying "if we told you how bad we think it's going to be, you wouldn't believe us, and if you did, you'd panic." So they've publicized the most conservative possible predictions, with the hope that if people see the problem as approachable, they'll have enough optimism to try. It seems that gambit has failed, as the clathrate gun roars to life, the peatlands in Canada dry to tinder, and so much more.
And still the denialists look back 120kya, saying "it was this hot back then and we did fine."
It's sad how the scientists have to keep changing the goal. "Well, if we start moving away from CO2-based economy today, by 2100 only x hundred million people on the planet will suffer from inhospitable heat.". With the number x growing and growing because everytime we look we still haven't done anything.
The thing is, we now have decades of empirical evidence to confirm or deny the predictions. What scientists have been (mostly) right about is the rise in temperature; the models have nailed that from decades out.
What scientists have been somewhat wrong about is the impact of that temperature rise - even the small 1.2C rise so far has produced much stronger effects on biologically-relevant variables at the tail.
So in a sense, they've been spot on about global warming itself, but have consistently underestimated/understated the risks associated with it.
There were a lot of scientists who have consistently messaged the dire significance, but were generally ignored as wolf criers. They still are, even in the face of evidence of their correctness.
Al Gore was spot on with his labeling. It’s an inconvenient truth. We love to ignore and downplay it because reacting appropriately would really throw a wrench in our plans for infinite capitalism.
Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that current population levels and economic arrangements are simply not sustainable. I had hope for most of my youth that we'd figure something out. Now I think a large scale disruption leading to drastically less people consuming Earth's resources over the next century or so is the only possible future we have.
Exactly, some scientists raised the warning flags but were chastised despite being right. The obvious consequence has been a chilling effect - scientists are now heavily biased to understate the problem and most are somewhere between ultra-conservative and completely silent about impact predictions.
The scientists have been avoiding using the extremes of their data because they don't want to come off as scare-mongering, so yeah, it's happening faster than they've been saying.
In a few years people will probably blame them, "Why didn't you warn us!?!".
Same here. I read a couple of literature reviews on climate change on a particular hot summer vacation in 2016. It completely voided me of all hope that humans would somehow manage to ‘solve’ the wave of misery that is rushing towards us.
>> voided me of all hope that humans would somehow manage to ‘solve’ the wave of misery that is rushing towards us.
The general tendency of human(each generation) is to bid it safe and hope that their generation is not affected by whatever catacalysm is coming up. Everyone I know likes to believe that, they will be long dead before such things happen and science will figure something out.
So in general, people are more likely to continue abusive(towards nature) behavior because they hope that they won't be affected. Unfortunately, this doesn't help anyone and it is hard to change people's mind, until bad things start happening to them.
So, in summary, human is probably not intending to solve the wave of misery, but hoping to escape it, hence the general acceleration of the changes will be devastating and pretty fast.
Addicted individuals hardly change behavior until they hit the proverbial rock bottom. And it's still a toss up in terms of long term changes. I have no reason to believe we'd fare better collectively. Society won't change patterns of demand and activity until after disaster strikes. And even then, we're as likely to cling on to high energy consumption life styles and just letting poor countries perish as to actually renounce this insane 2/3 cars per family, huge homes and offices air conditioned to brisk temperatures lifestyle.
Southern Europe burns while Northern Europe is mowing grass and blowing leaves by burning gasoline in portable engines. It feels like the opening of a disaster movie.
We'll go back to selfishness and isolationism. The EU was supposed to be this cooperative utopia, but when Covid started to be real bad in Italy, its neighbors just shut the borders down. There was also hoarding of medical supplies (even legitimately bought stuff were blocked from being delivered).
I guess sooner rather than later we'll see militaries being deployed to secure (i.e steal from other nations) food and water, who cares about diplomacy and civilization if there's starvation. I wonder who's got the better military, Putin might've screwed Russia by getting his troops all shot up in Ukraine, if Siberia becomes fertile land and China needs food, who's going to stop them from saying "we're borrowing this bit of your country, that's cool with you, right?".
A friend posted a meme about why most people seem mostly calm instead of panicking, I commented, I guess individuals just need it to be normal for them and they'll feel fine, if they start paying attention they won't be able to sleep at night, so we trivialize the problem to solve the cognitive dissonance.
Not to diminish the outcomes seen in Paradise CA, Rhineland-Palatinate, Tuvalu, etc I've always figured that crop yields are a couple orders of magnitude more important than all other climate impacts put together, especially since vertical farms keep going bankrupt.
Unfortunately it seems we’ve chosen to get into a technological race with our own destruction, now that we’ve successfully insulated ourselves from most natural cycles. Maybe we will win and find solutions that successfully avoid our doom as a species. Maybe we won’t, and our version of intelligence is an evolutionary dead end.
